April 15 (Reuters) – Thailand has not yet decided whether it will increase its internal ceiling on a key debt ratio, Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas said on Wednesday.
Nitithanprapas, who is also the deputy prime minister, said the 70% for public debt-to-GDP was an internal ceiling.
“We still put fiscal discipline under core function of fiscal policy,” the minister said during a panel discussion at the International Monetary Fund-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington.
“But given the crisis at the moment, frankly speaking, we are working into details, whether we should internally increase the ceiling.”
The question of what any additional money would be used for was also being debated, he said.
“In my opinion, we have to use it to for the transitions and transformations, like things that we have discussed, transition from oil dependencies to renewable energy, and also to upgrade people to help vulnerable groups of people to upgrade their skills, so that that’s the things that we are considering.”
(Reporting by Karin Strohecker in London; editing by Rodrigo Campos)
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