Thailand’s bill for tackling Covid adds up to THB2.5 trillion
The government has spent nearly 2.5 trillion baht tackling the Covid-19 crisis, the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) said on Sunday.
The money, which included 1.5 trillion baht in borrowing, was spent on free treatment for all Covid-19 patients as well as stimulus schemes to soften the pandemic’s economic impact.
The battle against Covid has seen Thailand register budget deficits of 6.1 per cent in 2020, 9.1 per cent in 2021 and 4.9 per cent this year, according to the Finance Ministry.
On Sunday, NESDC secretary-general Danucha Pichayanan said about 80 per cent of the final 500 billion baht borrowed under emergency decrees has been disbursed. The rest should be disbursed by the end of this year.
The government also used 40.32 billion baht from the 2021 central budget and 16.3 billion baht from the 2022 budget to buy Covid-19 vaccines and compensate people during the pandemic. Another 37.19 billion baht from the 2020-2022 emergency budgets has gone to compensate public health professionals and national security officers.
The government also passed two decrees to soften Covid’s impact on business. The first provided 500 billion baht in soft loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at 0.01 per cent interest. The second was used to establish the Corporate Bond Liquidity Stabilisation Fund to buy bonds from private companies suffering liquidity shortages. The fund has a cap of 400 billion baht.
Additional Covid budget requests will be covered by the emergency central fund in the 2023 state budget, said Danucha.
