Parliament, "Sirikanya" points out that the government is asking for an additional 112 billion baht to reach the ceiling and allocate a budget deficit that is at an all-time high. Proceed with the project to save face as promised during the election campaign. Points out that it risks violating the law. Worried that the coalition parties are accomplices - Asks to reject this draft law. Ms. Sirikanya Tansakul, MP for the Move Forward Party, discussed the draft of the additional budget bill for fiscal year 2024, not exceeding 122 billion baht, saying that the budget for fiscal year 2024, which the government is about to ask the parliament for an additional loan of 112 billion baht and to find other income of another 10 billion baht, she viewed it as a good thing that money was not used from the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives or BAAC because she had always objected that it was against the objectives of the BAAC Act itself and that liquidity would not be sufficient, which ultimately reduced t he budget by 450 billion baht. Ms. Sirikanya said that from the government's additional borrowing of 112 billion baht, the 2024 budget will borrow to compensate for the deficit of 805 billion baht, which is considered a record high. The budget is rarely set to have such a high deficit. It is considered a continuous budget allocation, which will be a problem in increasing public debt and debt repayment. In addition, the immediate problem of borrowing to the ceiling leaves only 10,056 million baht remaining as the ceiling for additional borrowing. 'The problem is that when the money is not available in time like this, we have to look at the income side to see if the government will have enough budget left to cover the risk of not achieving the revenue target,' said Ms. Sirikanya. This means that the 2024 budget of 3.48 trillion baht may not be fully utilized in the end because income did not meet the target and the borrowing was not enough. What the government is doing is not concerned that the country will be in this risky situation, just to do the digital wallet project, which is why it has to borrow until the ceiling. Ms. Sirikanya said that in the first 8 months of this year, revenue collection was 26,238 million baht lower than the estimate. When looking at the excise tax, revenue collection for the first 9 months was 58,000 million baht lower than the target. In this situation, it is still unknown whether there will be enough revenue for 2024 or not. They still have to borrow the full ceiling from the House, leaving no room for risk management. Ms. Sirikanya said that for the central budget that was requested for approval from the council of 100 billion baht in the past 7 months, only 17,991.43 million baht was approved. In the past, it was seen that the economy was still bad, but there were no economic stimulus measures to help the people. It was seen that the money was reserved to do the digital wallet project of 43 billion baht at the end of the year. He also noted that using the mid-year budget at t he end of the year is unlikely to be possible because Section 21 of the Fiscal Discipline Act states that 'the preparation of additional expenditure budgets must be spent during the fiscal year,' which would not be possible to use across years, and would be considered a violation of the Fiscal Discipline Act. In addition, Ms. Sirikanya said that the project registration will take place in 15 days, but the host has not been found yet. It is still in the central budget. The registration system has just won the bid for 2 companies, and the payment system has not yet announced the procurement. There are also no incentive measures for small and small shops to join the project because the system is designed to support shops with long cash flow. 'I don't know how much the investment will be. I estimate it to be 500 billion baht. What will I get from the investment? I will save face, that I have done what I promised, even though the policy is not the same as the one I promised from the beginning. I will increase GD P by a maximum of 350 billion baht. I invested 500 billion and got 350 billion back. Is this worth it? And what will be lost is the increase in the country's fiscal risk. Right now, we don't have the ability to handle any emergency situations. The opposition just said that we need to take immediate measures to find money. Oh, there's no money left because we have to save it for the digital wallet. There's also the risk of breaking the law. If we can continue to break the law this time, it will create a wrong standard for budget management in the future, which will cause damage that we cannot assess. What will be lost is the favoring of large businesses, unknowingly squeezing small businesses, and the loss of the opportunity to solve immediate problems for the people because we will have to keep some money to do this project at the end of the year. And many more opportunities will be lost. The burden that will arise from now on will not end in the budget years 2024 and 2025, but will continue in 2026 and 2027. And it will cause areas that have a budget to develop the country to be affected. It is gradually decreasing. This will be the first, only and last big bullet for the government to have a project of this size,' said Ms. Sirikanya. Ms. Sirikanya said that she would like to send her concern to the coalition parties that they will become accomplices in this risky illegal act. She asked the government MPs to help overturn the draft of the additional budget bill for the fiscal year 67. Source: Thai News Agency