The Finance Ministry is mulling an additional soft loan programme for land transport operators to keep the logistics workforce at 6 million.
The plan was initiated after a representative from the Land Transport Federation of Thailand (LTFT) met with Finance Ministry authorities yesterday to submit a request for financial assistance.
An immediate liquidity injection could be used to help 300,000 land transport operators nationwide, said Finance Minister Uttama Savanayana.
The funding would come from the Bank of Thailand's 500-billion-baht soft loan scheme for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with a maximum credit line of 500 million baht at 2% interest, said Mr Uttama. Some 70 billion baht allotted to the scheme has been withdrawn by banks.
Another source of liquidity would come from the Government Savings Bank (GSB), which has a certain amount of money allocated for liquidity injection, he said.
GSB has approved soft loans for SMEs affected by the pandemic worth around 100 billion baht so far, from a total amount of 150 billion.
In the next phase, the government will support enhancing competitiveness and digitising the logistics sector to increase access information and improve transport efficiency, said Mr Uttama.
Thongyu Khongkhun, an advisory chairman of the LTFT, said 300,000 truck business operators have lost 40% of their revenue, while 40,000 passenger vehicle operators have lost 60-70% of revenue amid the crisis.
Total revenue for this business sector is 200-300 billion baht per year, said Mr Thongyu.
The Finance Ministry is being urged to lower the withholding tax to 0.5% of sales invoices from 1% collected by the Revenue Department. The move is to help businesses keep on employees and sustain liquidity, he said. Logistics operators need 10 million baht per loan per business, totalling up to 10 billion for the sector, said Mr Thongyu.