The head of the State Enterprise Policy Office is confident disbursement of state enterprises' investment budgets will reach 90% of the total this year, after tallying 32% as of May.
Enterprises using the fiscal 2022 year have until Sept 30, while those using the calendar year still have plenty of time for disbursement, said the office's director-general Pantip Sripimol.
Mrs Pantip said state enterprises regularly make major disbursements later in the year, meaning the low current disbursement rate was not a concern.
The total investment budget for 43 state enterprises in fiscal 2022 is 347 billion baht, of which 112 billion baht, or 32%, was disbursed as of May.
In fiscal 2021, 88% of the total investment budget of 350 billion baht was disbursed.
She said construction of mega-projects that are meeting the disbursement targets include the State Railway of Thailand's (SRT) line from Den Chai-Chiang Rai-Chiang Khong, and the SRT's Bang Sue-Rangsit mass transit route.
The SRT had the highest disbursement among state enterprises at 31.9 billion baht as of May. It is expected to disburse 44.2 billion baht out of a total investment budget of 68.4 billion this year, said Mrs Pantip.
She said in the past SRT had a slow disbursement rate, but it sped up in 2021 and this year after the enterprise split deals for many investment projects into several contracts, unlike earlier when it had one contract for each project.
As the contractors compete to complete their tasks, this enables the SRT to make faster disbursements to them.
The government's total investment disbursement during the first six months of fiscal 2022 was 188 billion baht, representing 31% of the total budget of 604 billion baht.
Mrs Pantip said state enterprises transferred revenue of 109 billion baht to state coffers from October 2021 to May 2022, exceeding the target by 14.9 billion, or 15.8%.
In fiscal 2021 state enterprises chalked up revenue of 160 billion baht, exceeding the target by 0.2%.