Pressure is mounting on the Bank of Thailand to ease the economic strain on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by slashing interest rates on commercial bank loans. Pichai Naripthaphan, deputy chairman of the Pheu Thai Party‘s strategies and politics committee and an advisor to Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, argued that the central bank needs to acknowledge the real-world challenges people are grappling with. He highlighted the stagnant income levels, rising expenses, and mounting debts that are forcing many to resort to high-interest informal loans.
According to the Fiscal Policy Office, Pichai revealed that Thailand’s economic growth in the last quarter of 2023 was a meagre 1.4%, with the overall expansion for the year only reaching 1.8% – a figure he classified as very low. He projected that without government intervention and…
