Thai government urged to create more jobs, curb costs of living

BANGKOK, December 6 (TNA) - The Thai government has been proposed to implement new measures to curb the costs of living at an appropriate level and to create more jobs for people to stimulate the national economy and to ease the problem of increasing non-formal debts. Thanawat Phonvichai, Director of the Center for Economic and Business Forecasting, under Bangkok-based University of the Chamber of Commerce (UTCC), voiced the proposal on Thursday, also urging for a further cut of lending interest rates as part of the official solution to the problem of non-formal debts by local households. Thanawat's remarks followed a recent survey on 1,203 random samples nationwide who worked in various sectors, which showed that most of the respondents, or up to 87.4 per cent, were indebted with their household lending to support their general spending, purchase of cars and businesses. Based on the recent survey, the average amount of household debt shouldered by most of the respondents was 316,623 baht per household, a 5.8 per cent year-on-year increase so far. Thanawat said although the recent survey found about 35.3 per cent of the household debts were from non-formal lending sources, against the larger 64.7 per cent proportion from formal lending insitutes, the amount of lending from non-formal sources this year has risen by 18.7 per cent year-on-year due to impacts from a drop in farm produce prices and the number of Chinese tourist arrivals in Thailand, as well as the ongoing trade war between the United States and China. Thanawat revealed his center has also assessed that there should be more demand for more household loans over the next one year, viewing that the Thai government's new measures to limit the costs of living at an appropriate level and to create more jobs for people to stimulate the national economy and to ease the problem of increasing non-formal debts are, thus, needed. (TNA)