Debt relief programme attracts nearly 150,000 Thais
A total of 149,833 people have registered for the Interior Ministry’s debt relief programme over the past three months, with a debt value of 11.09 billion baht, said ministry spokesperson Trisulee Trisaranakul on Thursday.
The registration, which opened on December 1 last year, will end today (February 29). The programme is one of the government’s efforts to tackle the issue of illegal lending at inflated interest rates.
Many debtors who had failed to repay their debts were reportedly threatened or assaulted by loan sharks.
Some 27,870 debtors have entered into a negotiation process since the start of the programme, with 17,848 cases resolved. In these cases, the creditors have agreed to reduce the debt value by 751.1 million baht and allow debtors more time to pay.
Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has instructed officials to focus on compiling a comprehensive database of debtors, enabling creation of an administrative mechanism and the legal authority to mediate between debtors and creditors involved in illegal lending.
Trisulee added that the main obstacle in this process is registrants having incomplete information about creditors, which has prevented officials from contacting them to enter into negotiation. She said the ministry will try to fix this by cross-checking with the ThaiD application database which serves as a digital ID for Thai citizens with facial recognition capability. The ministry will also coordinate with district chiefs and village headmen to locate the creditors.
Besides facilitating the debt negotiations, the ministry will also provide useful information for debtors, signing them up for a programme aimed at helping them manage finances more efficiently in the future. This would include, for example, information about soft loans provided by state-run banks, job vacancies from the Department of Employment, and vocational skill improvement programmes provided by related state agencies.
In another approach to fix problems endemic in illegal lending, the ministry has been coordinating with the Royal Thai Police and the Office of the Attorney General to crack down on creditors who have been charging interest rates over the legal limit or using illegal methods in debt collection, said Trisulee.
