Self-employed people given hands by NCPO

BANGKOK, June 3 (TNA) - Thailand's National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) eyes to assist self-employed people by encouraging government-run financial institutes to extend loans to them in order to address informal loan problems. Luck Wajananawat, President of the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), told journalists on Tuesday that, in order to solve informal loan problems, the NCPO has ordered the Ministry of Finance's Fiscal Policy Office (FPO) to propose a plan for government-run financial institutes to form a corporate body to lend to the small-scaled operators who have no access to formal financial institutes. Luck said that such loans will be subject to the fixed interest rate of 3 per cent a month. Besides, there will be a law to control debt collections to take care of both creditors and debtors. Luck affirmed that the BAAC is ready to meet the NCPO's policy by studying lending to the small-scaled operators who are not famers. According to the BAAC president, his bank will offer such loans together with local organizations, including village funds, community-based financial institutes and agriculture-related cooperatives, with the local organizations to design lending methods and the BAAC to fund the lending. The BAAC chief expected that there should be additional 3,000 new community-based financial institutes to join the plan within three years. (TNA)