BAAC to lend BT60 BN borrowed from central bank

“The BAAC will use its own funds to match 30 per cent of the soft loan from the central bank, which will charge only 0.01 per cent for five years,” Kittiratt said after meeting with BAAC executives. The government recently issued an emergency decree requiring the Bank of Thailand to provide soft loans worth Bt300 billion.
The BAAC will offer loans of up to Bt1 million to individuals and Bt30 million to enterprises at an interest rate of 3 per cent per annum, said Kittiratt, who is also deputy prime minister.
Next month the bank will distribute 5,000 credit cards to farmers via pilot projects in Ayutthaya, Saraburi, Lop Buri, Udon Thani and Chiang Mai, before offering the cards to farmers nationwide in May, he said.
The cards are to be used to buy seeds, fertiliser and other capital goods for farm production. Some 2 million cards are expected to be distributed in May.
The BAAC will also implement the government’s cassava-pledging scheme worth Bt28.25 billion between February and May, he said. Each farmer will be able to mortgage up to 250 tonnes of cassava root. They will get Bt2.9 per kilogram from the government, he said.
The BAAC will also offer loans worth Bt15 billion to rubber cooperatives at zero interest to shore up the rubber price, he said, as well as Bt1 billion in loans to pineapple-processing factories at 5 per cent for three months.
Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry said the economy had passed its worst point after the severe flooding last year.
Somchai Sujjapongse, director-general of the Fiscal Policy Office, yesterday said the economy was expected to expand 2 per cent year on year in the first quarter, after a sharp contraction of 5 per cent in the fourth quarter last year. He said full-year growth for 2011 was expected to be only 1.1 percentage point below the initial projection of 4.5 per cent. Economic growth this year is expected to reach 5 per cent, he said.
“The worst point was in November; the economy started to recover in December,” he said.
Consumption in December recovered as collection of value-added tax using constant-price figures rose by 9.8 per cent year on year, he said. Import of capital goods increased 13 per cent, indicating a recovery in private investment.
Exports contracted only 2 per cent in December compared with a contraction of 14.4 per cent in November, Somchai said.
Risk factors for this year include the debt crisis in Europe, the direction of the US economy after the presidential election, climate change and the domestic political situation, he added.