February 5, 2004

Bank of Thailand Aid Package For Chicken Farmers

The Bank of Thailand plans to extend soft loans to help chicken farmers tide over the bird-flu outbreak, bank Governor Pridiyathorn Devakula said Thursday.

The central bank plans to offer loans at 0.01% interest to financial institutions, who would then relend the funds to chicken farmers at a rate of 2%.

"We need to help them (chicken farmers) access new funding so that they can continue their business," said Pridiyathorn.

But it's unclear how much of such loans the central bank would provide, and when the proposed financial support scheme will start. The central bank is still in the midst of collecting information from financial institutions on the indebtedness of chicken farmers.

Nearly 26 million chickens have been culled in Thailand and mass slaughters have been completed in all but eight districts of five provinces.

Thailand's billion-dollar poultry industry faces massive losses from bird flu, with its small farmers expected to be the worst hit.

The country is the world's fourth-largest exporter of chicken products, shipping about 500,000 tons of chicken worth 52 billion baht ($1=THB39.076) in 2003. The European Union, Japan and other major markets have banned Thai chicken products over disease fears.