The Pheu Thai Party has unveiled a new policy aimed at tackling four major types of debt that Thailand and its people are struggling to cope with, namely public debt, debts facing farmers, those incurred by SMEs, and non-bank debts.
The nation’s public debts have surged by 5.16 trillion baht over the past eight years under the Prayut Chan-o-cha administration, said Paopoom Rojanasakul, a party deputy secretary-general and member of the party’s economic policy committee.
As it could take up to 74 years to pay off all this substantial debt, Pheu Thai has created new policies to fast-track the country’s economic growth, he said.
To help the 90% of agricultural households that are struggling to repay their debts, with 430,000 baht per family owed on average, the party will introduce a new three-year debt moratorium programme, Mr Paopoom added.
As for the 200 billion baht in bad debt owed by SMEs in 2.3 mil- lion non-performing loan accounts, the party will introduce a one-year debt moratorium. This will be implemented along with a debt-restructuring programme, he noted.
For the more than 1.4 million people overwhelmed by non-bank debts, Pheu Thai will use pico-finance as a key mechanism to compete with those offering non-bank loans, he said.
Pico-finance which offer loans with a lower interest rate will attract people to borrow from the government, he said.