The commodities price crisis of the past few years has drastically affected domestic savings, says the head of the Government Savings Bank (GSB). President and chief executive Chatchai
Payuhanaveechai said gross domestic savings in the second quarter of this year rose by 769 billion baht, a 33% decline from growth in the quarter earlier when total savings rose by 1.16 trillion baht.
"It reflects that people are feeling the pinch of the sluggish economy," said Mr Chatchai. The economic slowdown has affected people’s income, especially middle- and low-income earners. Besides, , at a time of low interest rates, commercial banks are not focused on income from deposits.
The GSB expects both outstanding deposits and loans to expand 4% on the assumption that GDP this year will be 2.7%, with outstanding deposits and loans expected to grow 4.5% to 6% next year if GDP can expand at 3-4%.
Non-performing loans (NPLs) currently stand at 2% of total outstanding loans, higher than the previous 1% average. Therefore, the GSB has set a target to reduce them to 1.6% to 1.7% by the year-end.
However, its NPLs are still relatively low compared with the overall NPLs of the banking sector, which stand at 2.38% on average, with special mention loans at 2.7% and the NPLs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) accounting for 3.44% of total SME loans.
The demand of SMEs for the GSB’s 100-billion-baht soft loan under the government’s SME aid package remains high.
Under the state’s soft loan scheme, the GSB has a budget of 100 billion baht to lend to commercial and other state-run banks at 0.1% interest, with the banks required to relend to SMEs at a 4% rate.
As of Oct 28, the GSB has approved loans worth a total 21 billion baht, with tens of billions of baht waiting for approval.
Soft loan applications will stand at 70-100 billion baht by the end of this year and the loan withdrawal is scheduled to be finished by next March.
SME operators should speed up applications for the loans as banks require time to process their applications, Mr Chatchai said.
The soft loan is part of the government’s stimulus measures to help SMEs gain access to loans from banks.
Other measures include a 100-billion-baht credit guarantee scheme by the Thai Credit Guarantee Corporation, a two-year tax cut to 10% for net profit over 300,000 baht, a five-year tax exemption for SME start-ups and a 6 billion baht venture capital fund.
In case there is heavy demand for the 100-billion-baht soft loan programme, the state-owned bank has prepared its own fund of 8 billion baht with an interest rate at 5% per year to support SME customers, Mr Chatchai said.