Thai Cabinet to consider executive decrees to support water management

BANGKOK, February 23 (TNA) - Thailand's two executive decrees required for the government's new borrowing to fund water management and flood rehabilitation projects and to transfer the repayment responsibility for a 1.14-trillion-baht debt of the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF) to the Bank of Thailand (BOT) will be tabled before the Cabinet for further consideration next week. Thai Permanent Secretary for Finance Areepong Bhoocha-oom said that he will present details on borrowing criteria and systems to supervise and manage the debt to the Cabinet on February 28, after Bangkok's Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that the two executive decrees are constitutional. Under an executive decree, the Thai government is legitimate to borrow 350 billion baht for water management and flood rehabilitation projects, in the wake of a worse flooding crisis in the country late last year, with parties authorized to implement the projects legally required to file their project details with the government's Strategic Formulation Committee for Water Management within June 2013. Areepong acknowledged that the Thai government will seek short-term loans from domestic sources through issuing bonds to raise money for the projects, and that the borrowing should be achieved for the projects before the next rainy season. Regarding the other executive decree on the 1.14-trillion-baht debt of the government-owned FIDF, Areepong told journalists that he will inform the Thai Cabinet of the requirement for local commercial banks to pay a levy fee equivalent to 0.47 per cent of their total deposits to the FIDF to repay the debt, but concerned authorities have not yet decided which fund will separately receive the similar 0.47 per cent contribution from state-owned special banks, noting that the decision will be fair to commercial banks. According to the senior official, the confirmed legality of both executive decrees will make people, as well as Thai and international investors confident that the Thai government will be able to manage water in the country, has financial disciplines and can afford its spending. (TNA)