The government is focusing on maintaining financial and fiscal discipline after undertaking massive borrowing, says Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith.
Mr Arkhom said the Finance Ministry is not planning more borrowing now and assigned the Fiscal Policy Office (FPO) to assess the economy and consider the necessity of launching additional measures to ease the cost of living.
He said the government already borrowed huge sums in recent years, similar to other countries. Now many countries are promoting economic recovery by focusing on investment.
Thailand is accelerating the disbursement of investment budget and focusing on maintaining fiscal discipline, said Mr Arkhom.
He said the government is considering whether to extend the "Khon La Khrueng" co-payment subsidy scheme as it requires a huge budget and stimulates the economy for a limited period.
Such state subsidies should be wound down as the economy has returned to normal, said Mr Arkhom.
The current fourth phase of the co-payment scheme started on Feb 1 and is slated to end on April 30.
The government still has room to borrow the remaining 70 billion baht under the second emergency loan decree, which allotted a total of 500 billion baht to mitigate the impact of the prolonged pandemic.
FPO director-general Pornchai Thiraveja said the government collected net revenue of 1.09 trillion baht in the first half of fiscal 2022, 6.7% higher than the projection for the period and up 6.8% over the same period last year.
Most of the revenue was contributed by the Revenue Department, which collected 853 billion baht for the period, up 15.6% year-on-year.
The Excise Department collected net revenue of 276 billion baht, down 1.8% year-on-year and 5.8% less than had been estimated. The shortfall was attributed to a temporary cut in the excise tax on diesel oil to ease the burden on consumers from rising global oil prices.
Mr Pornchai previously said he believed the Thai economy will grow by a minimum of 3% this year, despite soaring domestic energy and product prices caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.
