FTI presses for action on wage-aid fund
The Federation of Thai Industries has appealed to the government to act quickly on the proposal to set up a fund to compensate operators for the increase in the minimum daily wage to Bt300, seen as the most essential measure to save as many as a million s
After Tuesday’s meeting of the joint public-private sector committee, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong, on relief measures, FTI vice president Vallop Vitanakorn said the meeting failed to finalise the compensation.
Some business lobbyists claim that the wage rise will crush some low-paying operators under heavy costs, and Vallop said the proposed compensation plan could help about 80-90 per cent of the 2.9 million SMEs across the nation.
He said Kittiratt, also finance minister, had accepted the proposed budget allocation of Bt50 billion for the compensation fund and the details would be concluded this month.
If the government cannot implement the plan to inject liquidity into hard-hit operators, they may turn into non-performing debtors under the soft-loan projects worth about Bt100 billion.
FTI secretary-general Tanit Sorat said yesterday that the fund could be the most efficient measure to ease higher labour costs instantly and should cover all labour-intensive operators.
The ratio of labour cost to total production cost could be used as the criterion for compensation.
The compensation scheme proposed earlier for the first three years should be sufficient for the operators to adjust, Tanit said.
Under the proposal, the difference in labour cost would be shared 75:25 by government and operators next year. The ratio would change to 50:50 in the second year and to 25:75 in 2015. From 2016, the operator will shoulder all labour costs.
Without the compensation measure, he claimed, some SMEs could find themselves unable to make debt payments by midyear.
Other relief measures, including fee reductions, an SME clinic and skill training, might not efficiently alleviate higher labour costs, he added.
An anonymous source from the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking said the government budget for wage-rise compensation was discussed at Monday’s meeting of the public and private sectors. In the discussion, the government said it had to use the budget for several state projects, while private-sector lobbyists insisted that relief measures were desperately needed for financially strapped SMEs after the wage increase.
