Cabinet policy outlined in upcoming statement to parliament
The policy of the newly approved cabinet led by Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin can be summarised in 7 points, namely “1 stimulation, 3 speeding up and 3 creation,” a news source from Pheu Thai Party said on Tuesday.
Srettha is finalising a statement of policy to announce to the Parliament on Friday (September 8).
The cabinet under Srettha and the Pheu Thai-led coalition has received His Majesty the King’s endorsement and was published in the Royal Gazette on Saturday.
According to the source, details of the policy are as follows:
* Stimulation
The new government aims to stimulate the domestic economy by launching the digital wallet scheme under which 10,000 baht of digital money will be provided to all Thais aged over 16 years.
The money must be spent at local businesses within a 4km radius of the citizen’s registered address within six months. It is estimated that about 560 billion baht will be required for the project.
The scheme could potentially increase its value sixfold to 3 trillion baht. It is set to start on January 1, 2024.
* Speeding up
The government will speed up the process/implementation of three key issues:
- Amendment of the constitution, with a focus on preserving the constitutional monarchy, by establishing a publicly elected constituent assembly.
- Set a debt moratorium for up to 3 years for farmers and 1 year for businesses affected by the Covid-19 outbreak.
- Reduce energy prices and the cost of living.
* Creation
- Creating revenues in high-potential industries such as tourism by providing free visas, and improving airport operations and flight management. The plan to raise the minimum wage to 600 baht and the minimum salary for Bachelor’s degree graduates to 25,000 baht also falls in this category.
- Creating career opportunities to reduce economic disparity, for example, providing land title deeds to farmers, promoting tree planting for carbon credit trading, reducing costs and burden of SMEs, and promoting a soft-power economy.
- Creating a better quality of life for all Thais, for example, solving the drug problems by treating addicts as patients, seizing assets of drug producers and dealers, improving the national healthcare scheme, and doing away with mandatory military conscription.
