The Director of the Budget Bureau, Dechapiwat Na Songkhla, has announced the Royal Thai Government’s plan to increase its investment budget in the 2022 fiscal year by 90 billion Thai baht. The increase would be in compliance with a 2018 law related to state financial and fiscal discipline.
The 2022 fiscal budget bill has an expenditure budget of 3.1 trillion baht, amounting to 17.9% of GDP. The bill anticipates a revenue of 2.4 trillion baht, which means that the government would need to borrow 700 billion baht to offset the deficit.
Of the proposed 90 billion baht added to the investment budget, around 50-60 billion baht comes from the 500-billion-baht emergency loan, with the remainder from the 2022 investment budget of state agencies and enterprises.
In line with Article 20 of the 2018 law related to state financial and fiscal discipline, when making a state annual budget, the investment budget must not be less than the deficit amount. The government has not announced their plan to comply with this law, as the current bill sets the investment budget at just 624 billion baht, lower than the deficit amount of 700 billion. Accordingly, the Royal Thai Government will need to raise the investment budget to over 700 billion baht to ensure compliance with the 2018 law.