By Thai Newsroom Reporters
MORE CATEGORIES OF merchandise are provided for people to buy under the Pheu Thai-initiated digital wallet project as of the start of the fourth quarter of this year, according to the Digital Government Development Agency.
The newly-established DGA today (July 24) issued a statement to add supplementary categories to the list of goods which Thai nationals aged 16 years and over may purchase for a maximum of 10,000 baht in market price via their digital wallet in their home district under the populist handout campaign.
In addition to food and non-alcoholic drinks, the other merchandise provided under the digital wallet project include textbooks and stationery items for students, medicine, fertilisers, seedlings and ritual wares. Though textbooks for students are provided, the project recipients cannot use their digital wallet to pay for education fees for their children.
Neither can the digital wallet be used with purchases of cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, marijuana, kratom leaves, gift vouchers, lottery tickets, electrical appliances, electronic goods or cellphones. Neither can it be used with the service sector such as spa and massage parlours, beauty salons and car wash garages.
The people in any of the country’s 878 districts may register themselves as recipient to the project via application on their smartphones from Aug. 1 until Sept. 15 and use the digital wallet within a six-month period as of Oct. 1.
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has reassured that the digital wallet project will not only stimulate domestic consumption on a short-term basis but help create jobs, promote local manufacturing industries and boost the GDP on a long-term basis.
Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat has earlier confirmed not as many as 50 million Thais nationwide would use the 10,000-baht digital wallet as earlier calculated and that about 45 million would eventually use it, thus reducing the project’s overall funding from 500 billion baht to 450 billion baht.
The planned funding for the digital wallet project will come from a total of 165 billion baht from the government’s Central Fund for the current fiscal year and the other 285 billion baht for the next fiscal year.
CAPTIONS:
Top: An image of a digital wallet by CardMapr.nl on Unsplash
Front Page: A representative image of the digital wallet scheme. Photo: Thai Rath
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