The government has disbursed 84% or 12.6 billion baht of the budget earmarked for 61,116 villages to fund economic support projects, says the National Village and Urban Community Fund Committee.
A total of 15 billion baht was budgeted for gradual transfer to villages across the country under the Pracha Rat initiative.
The goal is to disburse up to 90% of the budget to 64,000 villages by the end of November.
The funding is part of a local development plan under the Pracha Rat public-private scheme, which aims to reach 79,000 villages nationwide for the whole of 2017, when each village is expected to receive up to 200,000 baht to finance economic support projects.
The 15-billion-baht budget stems from the state's additional 190-billion-baht mid-year budget for fiscal 2017, a supplement set aside to spur upcountry growth.
Natee Klibthong, head of the National Village and Urban Community Fund Office, said approvals this year will be down slightly from last year, when more than 94% of the budget was approved and disbursed to over 66,000 villages.
Mr Natee said disbursement this year fell short because of several complaints about the transparency of projects and funds in some villages.
Last year, the government set aside 35 billion baht to finance the Village Fund scheme. Of that total, 33.13 billion baht or 94.7% was transferred to 66,337 villages.
Yesterday's committee meeting also approved training programmes for leaders of participating villages next year. In the first phase, the government will organise 8,000 leaders to be trained within the current fiscal 2018 (October 2017 to September 2018).
The content of the training programmes includes self-sufficiency economic philosophy, law, finance, agriculture, information technology and business management.
The programmes are aimed at giving villagers, particularly farmers, tech instruction to suit the Thailand 4.0 concept.
"Those leaders are expected to become the game-changing factors to help all villages be developed in sustainable ways," Mr Natee said.
The next step in the training programme is aimed at eradicating loan sharks in villages and letting villagers apply appropriate methods to their own household financial management.
