The Industry Ministry aims to merge two small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) funds with a 1.8-billion-baht budget into a single fund, expecting to ease lending criteria approvals for SMEs.
The Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion (Osmep) has been told to fold two funds -- SME Entrepreneurs Recovery Fund (1.2 billion baht) and SME Rehabilitation Fund (600 million), said the Industry Minister Uttama Savanayana.
The recovery fund previously had a budget of 2 billion baht, but part of it was disbursed for a 800 million baht in loans. The rehab fund was allocated a budget of 1 billion baht, but only 400 million baht in loans was approved for SMEs.
Mr Uttama said the reason to merge the two funds is to help SMEs more easily access the government's funds. The government has received many complaints from SMEs that loan approvals were very slow and the criteria too restrictive for them to qualify.
"The administration subcommittee of the Osmep board has already agreed to collapse these two funds and the ministry, which is in charge of Osmep, expects the new fund will be better managed to support the more than 5,000 local SMEs," he said.
Suwanchai Lohawattanakul, Osmep's director-general, said the two funds were slow in delivering loans to SMEs.
The ministry and Osmep found the two funds have many processes for loan applications, which is a major hurdle for SMEs. Some firms cannot run their businesses because they lack the capital budget, said Mr Suwanchai.
"The merged fund plan will be proposed to the Osmep board soon and the new fund should be ready to serve SMEs by next month," he said.
"We will revise lending conditions to make the new fund more accessible to SMEs. The first step is to increase minimum loans from 50,000 baht to 100,000 baht per company."
Osmep expects the new lending conditions to cover micro-SMEs, which also face obstacles in accessing loans from financial institutions.
The government estimates the new SME measures will help Thailand's economy and increase money circulation to 1 trillion baht, up by 5%. Osmep wants to team up with partners such as provincial schools to set up startups and SME centres.
