Undistributed funds raise govt budget by Bt10 bn

The move comes two months before the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

The Budget Bureau chief reaffirmed that the government would be able to meet its disbursement target of 96 per cent of the Bt2.575-trillion budget set for fiscal 2015, which would represent the highest disbursement rate for more than 10 years.

Some 80.3 per cent of the budget had been disbursed as of Monday, he said.

About 20 per cent, or about Bt450 billion, was set aside for government investment in the current fiscal budget, and the bureau expects that around 87-88 per cent of that amount will be disbursed this year.

Moreover, the disbursement targets for the fiscal 2016 budget of Bt2.72 trillion will be realised by the end of August, he added.

“The budget can be used to help combat the drought situation, and it is not too late since there is already some leftover central budget that can be used for such relief measures right now – and it can also be used to fund other urgent investment projects in the final two months of the 2015 fiscal year,” Somsak said after yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.

The government’s central budget can be disbursed directly via executive power under the discretion of Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha, without any need for a law to be drafted to back its usage, and around Bt70 billion has been set aside for central-budget use in fiscal 2015, he explained.

The Budget Bureau director did not, however, specify how much was left from the central budget in 2015, as that was “confidential information between the bureau and the prime minister himself”.

The law to protect the transfers of no more than Bt10 billion to the central budget will be drafted and submitted for Cabinet approval next month, and is expected to become effective by August 20.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister General Anupong Paochinda said his ministry was currently working with the Finance Ministry to come up with job-creation measures amid the ongoing drought by using the Bt10 million-per-province disaster-prevention budget that was set aside every year.

However, no details of how the money would be used were available as yet.

The job-creation measures will be concentrated in those parts of the Kingdom expected to be the worst affected by the drought – the central and northeastern regions.

Tourism and Sports Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul said the Cabinet had approved a measure to allow officials from all state authorities to travel for study purposes to connected neighbouring countries in order to boost tourism in the border areas.

Officials will be allowed to travel abroad to look at projects and survey areas that are useful to the development of their respective agencies, but are not allowed to sleep over in neighbouring countries as they will have to return at hotels in the Kingdom in order to boost the domestic hotel industry, she explained.

Deputy Finance Minister Wisut Srisuphan, meanwhile, said the Cabinet had approved a proposal by the Customs Department and the Finance Ministry to combine all 24 laws governing customs regulations into one bill, in order to speed up the customs-payment process for business operators.