The government has set aside 300,000 rai of land to redistribute to low-income farmers who don't have their own properties to work on.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said after chairing yesterday's meeting of the National Committee on Land Policy that the land would be released to the hard-up farmers by the end of the year.
"We have prepared sufficient land, several hundreds of billions of rai, and will next find more such land in all 76 provinces [for this project]," said the PM.
He told farmers interested in the scheme to be on the look-out for more updates, saying the government was still working on a set of regulations to ensure the farmland redistribution would be totally fair.
Rawiwan Phuridet, secretary-general of Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning, said this latest round of land reallocation had come after the government met its target of reallocating land to the low-income people last year.
The committee also agreed to set up two sub-committees to verify who is currently occupying state land and 8.4 million baht to fund the work, Ms Rawiwan said.
The committee also approved a budget of 54 million baht to hire 100 more staff to work for a new office at the National Committee on Land Policy.
Deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek said Gen Prayut had stressed to the meeting the importance of ensuring that the land would be properly developed after it being reallocated to farmers.
Ministries responsible for improving water resources and building new roads to these plots of land would work together to help those attempting to develop them, she said.
Gen Prayut also asked all government offices concerned to ensure that all developments on reallocated land were implemented in line with the national water management scheme.
The government is considering relaxing certain regulations to assure that farmers who receive the land can invest the maximum amount on their work, said Ms Rachada.
She envisaged that legal control over developments on allocated land might be via community businesses.