Secretary-General of the National Security Council Somsak Roongsita, who presides over a committee that considers steps to ease the lockdown, said the committee will meet today to discuss reopening more businesses. The committee will also consider a shorter curfew period of one hour, either from midnight-4am or 11 pm-3 am.
The government has come up with fresh steps to help ease the impact from the Covid-19 crisis, including quotas under procurement programs to purchase goods and services from small and medium-sized enterprises ( SMEs), Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said.
Speaking in a TV Pool broadcast Tuesday night, Gen Prayut said he had personally visited a variety of industry groups in recent weeks to listen to their pandemic-related woes.
"I particularly wanted to see those I've never had the opportunity to meet directly, especially those from smaller businesses, since I know they 're among those that really struggle a lot," Gen Prayut said. "I asked them to share with me the plight of their members and their thoughts and recommendations ... My goal is to find quick, short-term ways to soften the blow from the Covid-19 crisis on their members' incomes. I've got some very useful ideas."
Gen Prayut said after the meeting that he had agreed to introduce a series of steps to support them.
Next, he announced that he had introduced allocations from all state procurement budgets to buy local goods from small, medium, and micro-sized firms so they could receive extra revenue.
This will apply to quality products that are properly certified and registered, and will be done in a manner consistent with the regulations of the World Trade Organization, Gen Prayut said.
He said he had instructed relevant agencies to send him reports that they fulfilled this requirement by year-end, to make sure this happens.
Also from those talks, national retail malls told him they needed to reopen as quickly as possible, so they set in motion strict safety protocols to keep the infection from spreading, he added.
Their assurances allowed many shopping malls to reopen over a week ago, Gen Prayut said.
The prime minister went on to claim the tourism and travel industry had made it known that they needed the nation to rapidly open up to visitors. He said he told them if the risks return to a manageable level, he'll do so.
Gen Prayut said if the country reopened too quickly to foreign travelers and brought the virus with them, Thailand would have to return to the lockdown, which would be catastrophic.
As a result of these meetings, Gen Prayut also said he had instructed government agencies to spend their meeting budgets on hotels and other venues to give those hard-hit sectors additional revenue.
Elsewhere, as suggested by the Center for Covid-19 Situation Administration, government spokeswoman Narumon Pinyosinwat said on Tuesday, the cabinet has approved an extension of the implementation of the emergency decree for another month to the end of June.
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