By Thai Newsroom Reporters
NO BEAUTY OR HEALTH services will be allowed anywhere for use by those eligible to the Pheu Thai-led government’s 10,000-baht, digital wallet project, according to Deputy Finance Minister Paopoom Rajanasakul.
None of the eligible recipients of the populist handout campaign will be legally allowed to spend the money via their digital wallet at any beauty salons, health care units or massage and spa parlours, among other services, the Pheu Thai-attached deputy finance minister said today (May 18).
The Pheu Thai-initiated, digital wallet project will be rendered invalid for the purchase of alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, marijuana, kratom leaves and jewellery items. Neither will the recipient be legally entitled to buy gift vouchers via their digital wallet, Paopoom said.
Under the yet-contentious handout project, the eligible recipient, aged 16 years or over, may buy a maximum of 10,000 baht worth of merchandise in the boundaries of their home district within a six-month period, beginning in the fourth quarter of this year.
The Pheu Thai-led government intends to spend a 500 billion baht total on their digital wallet project with the planned use of 175 billion baht in government budget for the current fiscal year, plus 152.7 billion baht in the next fiscal year and 172.3 billion baht in “borrowed” money from the Bank for Agriculture & Agricultural Cooperatives
.Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin repeatedly confirmed that the digital wallet project will significantly promote domestic consumption, albeit on a short-term basis, stimulate the local economy nationwide and increase the country’s GDP in the long run.
But critics of the Pheu Thai novel handout campaign contended that it would likely squander the government’s limited financial resources, otherwise earmarked in funding for infrastructural, social and economic development schemes, and inevitably incur more public debt, regardless of the country’s debt repayment potential in following years.
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Top: Representative image of the digital wallet scheme. Photo: Thai Rath
Front Page: Contactless payment. Photo: Unsplash in collaboration with Vitalii Khodzinskyi
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