New Decade of Village and Urban Community Fund

(01/11/2012)

The Government has stressed its policy of promoting the Village and Urban Community Fund to help provide greater employment opportunities for various communities. In her remarks at the launching of the event “New Decade of Village and Urban Community Fund,” Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said that the Government has a policy to allocate more money to this revolving fund. The event took place at the IMPACT Exhibition and Convention Center on 25 October 2012, when the Prime Minister presided over the ceremony to transfer money to various communities operating the fund. The Village and Urban Community Fund was launched as a local funding source in 2001. This micro-credit scheme provides one million baht as start-up capital for each community to develop occupations and create economic activities that will generate income to ease poverty and improve local people’s living conditions. The number of village and urban funds has so far increased to 79,255 since this loan facility became available on 25 July 2001. The Government also established the National Village and Urban Community Fund Office to supervise the scheme. In the Government’s policy statement, delivered by Prime Minister Yingluck, the Government would increase the fund by one million baht per unit during its first year in office, in order to offer more loans to rural villages and urban communities. A number of people used the loans to ease their immediate financial difficulties and support their group activities. At the launching ceremony of the New Decade of Village and Urban Community Fund, a total of 21,614 funds under this scheme received an additional one million baht. The National Village and Urban Community Fund, during its meeting on 24 October 2012, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong, in his capacity as Chairman of the Fund, approved a budget of 21.6 billion baht to be allocated to the number of the funds. The Government Savings Bank and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives were asked to help transfer money to the funds. The Prime Minister said that during the past decade, 10 million people in Thailand had benefited from the Village and Urban Community Fund. Many villages have been successful in making use of the money for development work to improve the quality of life of local people and generate income. Their success is encouraging, and these villages should serve as models for other villages, as well. Moreover, she said, the fund would also help people expand their businesses, reduce non-conventional debts, and cut their costs, in line with the Government’s policy of increasing the people’s income, reducing their expenses, and providing them with greater opportunities. The Prime Minister also said that the Government would like to see the Village and Urban Community Fund help empower the people. The funds that have good management should be upgraded to community financial institutions and community banks in the future.