.
"It has been estimated that these measures could save the government around Bt75 billion per year -Bt35 billion in terms of banking and Bt45 billion in terms of financial and business transaction costs - from better targeting of government support and improvement in tax-collection efficiency," Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong said.
"This means that the estimated initial investment of around Bt2 billion to Bt3 billion should be well worth it," he added.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet also approved increasing the Government Savings Bank's 4-percent soft-loan policy for SMEs from the initial budget of Bt100 billion to Bt150 billion; the setting up of an initial operational budget of Bt10 billion for the Thailand Future Fund; and an increase of around Bt1.3 billion for the Thailand Village and Urban Revolving Fund to help low-income earners in Bangkok.
It also gave the nod to a Bt318.55-million increase in the loan budget to help 17,369 rubber farmers who have been hit by low rubber prices since the beginning of 2014.
The Government Savings Bank had used up around Bt80 billion of the original Bt100-billion budget for SME lending by the end of last month, yet there were still SMEs waiting for approval for loan support.