The Bank of Thailand (BoT) has urged financial institutions to speed up the provision of soft loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as loan approvals are not meeting targets. The loans are aimed at supporting the liquidity of SMEs impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak.
BoT deputy governor Ronadol Numnonda disclosed that soft loan approvals, under the BoT’s amended-soft loan scheme, are still below the central bank’s projection for the first phase. This is partly due to the impact of the third wave of COVID-19 infections, which has made the loan granting workflow challenging for financial institutions.
He said the institutions need to improve internal operations and speed up soft loan offerings, in order to help SMEs during this difficult time. The banks also need to work proactively, as the soft loan scheme has been implemented for some weeks, he said.
The BoT implemented the amended soft loan scheme on April 26th this year. As of May 17th, the central bank had granted 11.54 billion baht to 5,465 businesses, an average of 2.1 million baht per borrower. (NNT)
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