The Revenue Department wants to let individual and corporate taxpayers deduct expenses incurred from planting high-value trees from their income tax to comply with the government's push to raise the number of such trees to 1 billion in the next decade.
The tax-collecting agency is drafting the law for the tax deduction, said Prasertsuk Chamornmarn, executive director of the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organisation (TGO).
The government is also amending laws governing high-value trees to enable growers to cut them down for sale, he said.
The goal is to plant 40 million high-value trees within one year and 1.04 billion in the next 10 years.
The government also aims to create 2,000 communities to focus on planting high-value trees within a year, increasing to 20,000 in the next 10 years.
At the same time, the state-owned Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) is set to issue tree bonds and offer long-term loans for high-value tree planting.
Plans for the bond and loan offerings will take shape by the first quarter of 2019, BAAC president Apirom Sukprasert said after signing cooperation contracts with the TGO and the Biodiversity-Based Economy Development Office.
Given that high-value tree planting typically consumes 15-20 years, current lending products do not suit the lengthy period, Mr Apirom said.
Loans for high-value trees could contain features such as low interest rates and a grace period for a certain time.
The state-backed farm bank now offers the Greenhouse Credit scheme worth 5 billion baht to support growing high-value trees, but its maturity of a mere five years is not in line with high-value trees' time frame, Mr Apirom said.
The Green Credit product charges borrowers 4-6% interest.
The Commerce Ministry has issued a ministerial regulation to accept high-value trees of 58 varieties, including teak, Siamese rosewood and Burmese rosewood, as collateral under the Secured Transactions Act.