The cabinet yesterday approved amendments to the Agricultural Land Reform Act, which has been in force for 40 years, in a move to narrow land ownership disparity and maintain existing land for agriculture.
Key amendments include permitting heirs who do not want to pursue farming rights to own the land and sell back the land plots to the Agricultural Land Reform Office.
The amendments will also allow the agricultural land reform fund to pay farmers if they choose to quit farming and return their land plots.
Currently, the fund controls about 1 billion baht, which is available to buy land plots under the scheme from farmers and their heirs.
According to Kobsak Pootrakool, assistant minister to the Prime Minister's Office, the amendments will also allow the Agricultural Land Reform Office to buy land plots beyond the agricultural land reform scheme from general people who want to sell their land to allow allocation to farmers in need.
Currently, there are about 8 million farmers or 2.1 million families holding 34 million rai under the agricultural land reform scheme, 25% of the country's total agricultural land.
According to Mr Kobsak, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said at yesterday's cabinet meeting that there was no need to introduce any fresh stimulus measures to offset the slowdown in activity during the mourning period and ward off downside risk in the fourth quarter.
The premier said he still believed the myriad of measures already introduced to help small and medium-sized enterprises would be sufficient to drive economic growth in the remaining months.
"The Thai public should not worry about economic development," he said. "The government is confident in managing economic growth."
Gen Prayut ordered related agencies to cooperate in driving economic development and informing the public that the Thai economy retains good fundamentals with a manageable public debt ratio and relatively high foreign reserves.
But Mr Kobsak said the economic ministers have been closely monitoring the country's economic development and are ready to introduce additional measures to stimulate economy.
"If needed, the measures are likely to be directed at spurring up consumption such as tax incentives to stimulate a year-end spending spree as introduced last year," he said.
The Finance Ministry said on Monday that it was seeking fresh stimulus measures to offset the slowdown in activity during the mourning period and to ward off downside risk in the fourth quarter.
The measures, however, will not interfere with the sentiment of the people at the moment, said finance permanent secretary Somchai Sujjapongse.
Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong has told his ministry to explore additional measures to maintain economic momentum during the three months through December.
The ministry has forecast GDP growth of 3.3% this year.