Businesses say the government's raft of economic measures, including its latest strategy to beef up local development, will boost Thailand's economic growth by 0.5 percentage points next year.
Vichai Assarasakorn, vice-chairman of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, said the measures will be instrumental in driving economic growth to 4-4.5% next year, up from the 3.5-4% earlier projected.
The measures are worth a combined 157 billion baht, plus 100 billion baht from the mid-year budget to finance local development of 18 provincial clusters.
The cabinet recently approved a mid-year budget of as much as 190 billion baht for fiscal 2017. Some 100 billion baht will be set aside for local development of the 18 clusters, with the rest for Village Fund development worth 500,000 baht per village.
Each provincial cluster will be earmarked in a range of 5-60 billion baht, compared with 400-500 million in the past, to sharpen the country's competitive edge.
In addition, state investment in big-ticket infrastructure projects worth 220 billion baht will be pumped into the economy next year.
Mr Vichai said to assist with the government's stimulus plan, the chamber compiled a list of development projects proposed by each group of provinces that require investment of 83 billion baht for cabinet consideration early next year. The projects largely cover agriculture, tourism and services, trade and investment and logistics development.
Businesses have for the first time been allowed to engage in jointly mapping the fiscal budget and development projects with the government and local administrations under the Pracha Rat (People's State) initiative's public-private collaboration scheme.
He said 400 agricultural development projects with an investment cost of 25 billion baht were proposed, along with 400 tourism and services projects worth 32 billion, 116 trade and investment projects worth 7.9 billion, and 27 logistics development projects worth 18.2 billion.
If these projects start by March as planned, their budgets could be injected into the local economy by the middle of next year.
"This year the business sector forecasts the Thai economy will grow to 3.3-3.5%, with an export contraction of 1% to zero," Mr Vichai said. "But next year's prospects are much more promising despite challenges from US international trade policies, political uncertainties in the EU, anticipated interest rises by the US Federal Reserve and China's economic slowdown."
Last year, the Thai GDP grew 2.8%.