State-owned enterprises told again to hasten investment
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FINANCE MINISTER Sommai Phasee has continued to press upon state-owned enterprises (SOEs) the need to perform in regard |to their investment disbursement, |as further delays would be costly in terms of interest payments and|the effects on economic expansi
Kulit Sombatsiri, director-general of the State Enterprise Policy Office, said yesterday after a meeting between the minister and representatives of the Finance Ministry who are sitting as board members at 46 SOEs that only 30 per cent of the SOEs’ 2015 investment budget worth Bt350 billion had been disbursed so far.
The fiscal year ends on September 30.
Thirty-five SOEs operating under the fiscal budget with a combined investment allocation of Bt141 billion for 2015 have only disbursed 31 per cent (Bt43.94 billion) of their budget during the first nine months of the fiscal year, while 11 SOEs that operate under their own revenue with an investment budget of Bt207 billion have disbursed 30 per cent (Bt63 billion) in the first seven months of the calendar year, he said.
“We are not worried about the 11 SOEs that are operating outside the fiscal budget year as they have five months left to disburse the remainder of their 2015 budget, but the 35 SOEs that could only disburse 31 per cent of their investment so far, despite the fact that there has been no political turmoil this year, is currently our main concern,” Kulit explained.
“The finance minister has pressed upon those SOEs the need to hurry up with the drafting of terms of reference and investment contracts, price calculations and the auction process, since they are the main cause of the delays,” he added.
A prime example of how the state can lose money from a delayed investment project is when the government has to secure a loan to fund a project, which then fails to go anywhere.
The government still has to pay interest on the loan anyway, such as the official development assistance (ODA) loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency to fund construction of the mass-transit system’s Red Line project, he said.
The second ODA loan from the Japanese agency for construction of the Red Line is worth around
