The Finance Ministry will tomorrow (Tuesday) seek cabinet’s approval for a set of measures to help farmers and local communities with 93 billion baht in funding from the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, said Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak on Monday.
The fund is to be divided into three portions. The first portion of 6 billion baht will be extended in the form of low-interest loans to some 500,000 farmers affected or to be affected by drought.
Each farmer will be eligible to borrow a maximum of 12,000 baht from BAAC which will charge an interest rate of 4 percent starting at the seventh month after they have received the loan from the bank. The first six months will be interest free which means that they are charged an average of 2 percent interest rate per annum.
The second portion of 72 billion baht is called the fund for One Tambon One SME project to be extended by BAAC to help strengthen small or medium-sized enterprises in each tambon. Each tambon will receive two million baht and interest rate is 4 percent per annum.
The remaining 15 billion baht is intended to encourage farming communities to change their production structure in three years.