ID :
490190
Fri, 04/27/2018 - 11:31
Auther :

Thai workers mostly indebted

BANGKOK, April 27 (TNA) - A latest survey shows that most Thai workers have been indebted over the past decade, caused mainly by their imbalanced revenues and expenditures, calling for the government to raise the daily minimum wages on the yearly basis. Thanawat Phonvichai, Director of the Bangkok-based University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce's Center for Economic and Business Forecasting, told journalists on April 26 that his center's survey earlier this month on 1,194 random samples of workers nationwide who earn less than 15,000 baht monthly found 96 per cent of them have remained indebted since 2009. Thanawat said each of the surveyed workers has at least one dependent family member to be supported and 36.1 per cent of them were found to be indebted by their higher daily living costs than income. Thanawat revealed that 24.9 per cent and 10.8 per cent of the surveyed workers need to repay their car and house debts on the installment basis, while 13.6 per cent, 7.2 per cent and 6.7 per cent of them have to repay their debts for investment and lending programs, as well as healthcare respectively. According to the senior economist, Thailand's household debts now stand at 137,988.21 baht each on average, about 65.4 per cent of which are formal debts, with a monthly repayment of 5,719.97 baht each on average, and the rest are informal debts, with a monthly repayment of 4,761.12 baht each on average. The senior economist noted that nearly 60 per cent of the surveyed workers have no savings, while a number of those who have savings have deposited less than 10 per cent of their monthly income. The senior academic revealed that most of the surveyed workers, or 63.3 per cent of them, expressed their moderate satisfaction with the Thai government's latest daily minimum wage increase, effectively as of early this month, but calling for the administration to raise the daily minimum wages every year, along with the implementation of measures to cut the jobless problem, curb the costs of living, take care of Thai workers through a practical social security system and address the problem of migrant workers. (TNA)

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