State enterprises' income contribution surpassed the target by 30% during October to February, says the chief of the State Enterprise Policy Office (Sepo).
Enterprises sent 64.5 billion baht for the five months through February to the government, outpacing the target by 14.8 billion, said director-general Ekniti Nitithanprapas.
State enterprises' income contribution has been the main factor helping the government avoid a larger budget deficit as tax revenue has fallen short of the targets in recent years. Higher-than-targeted income contribution from the enterprises could be attributed to their improving efficiency after the adoption of information technology and innovation, he said.
The target for fiscal 2018 revenue collection is 2.45 trillion baht, while the annual budget is 2.9 trillion, leaving a deficit of 450 billion. But the deficit will swell to 550 billion baht when an additional 100-billion borrowing plan for the supplementary budget is included.
For the 56 state enterprises, their income contribution target is 137 billion baht for fiscal 2018.
In the last fiscal year, state enterprises sent 162 billion baht to the government, outpacing the target by 23.9% and rising 21% from a year earlier. State enterprises' income contribution helped the overall revenue collection exceed the target by 0.3% in the 2017 fiscal year, while the Revenue Department missed its collection target by 4%, and customs fell short by 13%.
The top five income-contributing state enterprises for the first five months of fiscal 2018 were the Government Lottery Office, the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand, Airports of Thailand, the Government Savings Bank and the Provincial Electricity Authority.
In February, these entities sent 13.9 billion baht to the government, exceeding the target by 1.9 billion, said Mr Ekniti.
He said Sepo has a policy of encouraging state enterprises to adopt innovation and technology to improve their operations to match the Thailand 4.0 model.
The Finance Ministry recently said that the government collected 738 billion baht from October to January, exceeding the target by 28.3 billion.
But two of the three tax-collecting units failed to meet the mark.
