State agency promotes growing economic trees to serve as loan collateral
A senior Business Development Department official visited Ubon Ratchathani province to promote growing of economic trees that could be used as collateral to obtain bank loans.
Raweephan Changyencham, deputy director-general of Business Development Department, visited Ban Bua Thoeng village in Tambon Tha Chang in Sawang Wirawong district, and said the goal of her visit was to help farmers and members of community enterprises benefit from the business collateral act.
Raweephan said she would encourage farmers in the province to grow economic trees as a means of creating sustainable income for the family and communities.
She said her department had joined hands with the Ubon Ratchathani commerce office, the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) and the Forestry Department to educate local farmers on how to use their economic trees on their farmlands as collateral to obtain bank loans.
Raweephan said her department wanted to help farmers and community enterprises access funds.
She said some 70 farmers and members of community enterprises took part in the seminar, titled “Economic trees as business guarantees”. She added that the participants were excited and wanted to know more details on how to use economic trees as collateral.
The government published a directive in the Royal Gazette on November 5, 2018 allowing the use of economic trees as loan collateral.
As of August 16, a total of 146,282 economic trees were used to obtain loans worth 137 million baht – 128 million baht (23,000 trees) from Krung Thai Bank, 3 million baht (318 trees) from BAAC and 6 million baht (122,964 trees) from micro finance firms.
