Kittiratt: Balanced budget in sight

Kittiratt: Balanced budget in sight

The government is moving well toward to its target of balancing the fiscal budget, Finance Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong said on Saturday.

Speaking on the "Yingluck Government Meets the People" weekly programme on NBT, Mr Kittiratt said the government's budget deficit was 400 billion baht before the Pheu Thai government took office in August 2011.

The deficit was now down to 300 billion baht and it would fall further to 250 billion baht in the 2014 fiscal year that starts in October, he said.

Officials said earlier that they hoped to see a balanced budget by 2017 or earlier. The last time Thailand had a balanced budget was from 2003-05 when Thaksin Shinawatra was prime minister.

Mr Kittiratt, who is also the deputy prime minister in charge of economic affairs, also said that outstanding public debt currently stood at 44% of gross domestic product, substantially lower than the legally mandated ceiling of 60%.

The government would ensure that public debt would stay below 50% of GDP despite planned spending of 2 trillion baht on infrastructure development over the next seven years, he added.

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