By IRNA-TNA
Bangkok : Finance Minister Chalongphob Sussangkarn on Monday warned political parties not to emphasize adoption of a populist economic policy for short term political gains. He said the previous government had counted on its populist policy to reap political gains in the past. It had changed Thai society and gave people the hope that they would continue to receive benefits from the policy.
Many political parties had now come up with their own populist policies to attract people for political gains in the short term. So, Dr. Chalongphob said he wanted to warn the political parties that populist policies, if implemented, would make them earn political gains only in the short run, but it would have negative repercussions in the long run. Should the policy be adopted, he said, a systematic debt control system should be set up to monitor danger signals so that problems could be solved in time.
Now, Dr. Chalongphob said, the structure of Thai society has changed. In the coming five years the size of the middle-class will increase, and this growing group is likely to object what they thought unjustifiable.
He conceded the populist policies had worked efficiently in some undeveloped countries. In Thailand, the efficiency of the policy remains in doubt as debts of hundreds of billions of baht incurred by the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives from the previous government’s populist programs have yet to be settled.