The House of Representatives meeting to consider the draft of the 2025 Budget Expenditure Act, 2nd and 3rd readings, first day, the opposition committee disagreed with the budget cut of state enterprises to be placed in the central budget to use the digital wallet project because it was not clear. While the minister said that after the policy statement, there will be clear details.
The House of Representatives meeting today (3 September) is to consider the draft budget bill for fiscal year 2025, 2nd and 3rd readings, which the special committee has already considered.
Mr. Chulaphan Amornvivat, Deputy Minister of Finance, as Vice Chairman of the Committee Mr. Chulaphan Amornvivat, Deputy Minister of Finance, as Vice Chairman of the Special Committee to Consider the Draft Budget Act for Fiscal Year 2025, said that the Committee still maintains the budget for fiscal year 2025 at 3,752,700 million baht, but there are still changes to the budget in the unnecessary part, totaling 35,000 million baht, from 5 stat
e enterprises, which will be used as a central budget for economic stimulus and strengthening the economic system, which will increase the central budget for economic stimulus from the original proposal of the Cabinet of 152,700 million baht to 187,700 million baht.
The Committee’s considerations have given importance to the mission of supporting the country’s economic stimulus, solving people’s living problems, and making the economy grow and become strong, effectively supporting economic impacts.
In Section 6, the central budget, this is an issue that the minority committee is quite interested in the debate and proposed cutting the central budget by 152.7 billion baht, and some people proposed cutting it all because the government took some of the budget from defaulting on state banks’ debts of 35 billion baht and put it in the central budget for economic stimulus, the digital wallet project, and put it back to pay off state banks’ debts as before because it is seen that there is currently no cabinet and
no government policy statement to the parliament, so the project details are not clear.
However, Mr. Chulaphan confirmed that it is necessary and after the government’s policy statement, there will be details on the digital wallet project.
Finally, the meeting voted by a majority of 265 to 154 to approve Article 6, the central budget expenditure of over 842,000 million baht. It was found that in the voting of the Palang Pracharath Party MPs, they were clearly divided into 2 groups, with the group of MPs from Lt. Col. Thammanat Prompao, the party secretary, voting to approve according to the majority of the committee, while the group of MPs from Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan voted against.
The majority of Democrat MPs voted to approve Article 4 of the budget framework, but when considering the central budget in Article 6, it was found that Jurin Laksanawisit, the party-list MP of the party, did not vote.
In addition, MPs from Lt. Col. Thammanat’s group also moved to sit in the Pheu Thai Party zone in the meeting r
oom. Before this, they went to greet members from other parties, both Bhumjaithai and Ruam Thai Sang Chart, but did not go to the Palang Pracharath Party MP seat. Mr. Chulaphan also walked over to greet them and pointed at the Pheu Thai Party name sign in a teasing manner, causing Pheu Thai MPs sitting in that area to laugh.
Tomorrow the meeting will start at 09.00-22.00 hrs. and on September 5th, starting at 09.00 hrs. It is expected that the entire draft will be voted to approve around 21.00 hrs.
Source: Thai News Agency