POVERTY REDUCTION
STRATEGY IN THAILAND
Dr Monthip Sriratana Tabucanon
Deputy Permanent Secretary
Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
Bangkok, Thailand
I) INTRODUCTION

The Royal Thai Government
(RTG) has recognized the holistic
approach to poverty reduction
since 2001. The RTG has declared
the poverty reduction as the
National Agenda and has set the
goal to combat with the poverty.

In the context of development of Thailand.
The Government has identified the target
groups who live in poverty.

Poverty is the multidimensional problem
and there is an attempt from the
Government to get out of poverty by 2008.

With that perspective, the poverty is
actually considered as a structural problem
which has resulted eventually and gradually
from many factors over a long period of
time and thus requires various measures
accordingly.
II) SITUATION OF POVERTY IN THAILAND


The governments have important roles in
poverty reduction, but their records are
mixed with the both successes and failures.
The most successful poverty reducing
policies are perhaps the implementation of
sound macroeconomic policy and the
promotion of efficient resource allocation.

Policies targeting the poor are often
plagued with a wide range of
implementation deficiencies that usually
result in either the assistance leaked to the
non-poor or the poor have no access to the
assistance.
Table 1: Access by the Poor to Various Poverty Programs in 2002
(% of respective groups)
Poverty Programs
Poor
Vulnerabl
e
Non-poor,
NonVulnerable
Total
Universal Health Care (30 Baht Scheme)
85.4
86.0
67.1
69.7
Social Insurance
0.5
0.8
9.3
8.1
Old Age Assistance
0.5
0.7
0.4
0.4
Debt Moratorium
2.4
2.4
1.9
2.0
Farmers Assistance Fund
0.9
0.9
0.5
0.6
School Lunch Program
11.1
12.4
6.8
7.5
Education Scholarship
0.3
0.2
0.2
0.2
Education Loans
0.9
1.1
0.6
0.6
People Bank
0.1
0.0
0.2
0.2
Village Revolving Fund
7.0
8.4
7.6
7.6
Source: Socio-Economic Survey 2002, The National Statistics Office
Note: The Vulnerable Group is defined as individuals whose household incomes were
below 1.2 times of the poverty lines.
The target groups divided into three categories

The extreme or chronically poor,
conceptually the poor people who are facing
extreme hardship and find it more difficult
than others.

The moderately poor, defined as those
currently living in poverty but are capable of
escaping poverty on their own if the
economy is growing at its traditional rates.

For the PSA-Poverty, the government set
the objective to reduce income poverty to be
no more than 12 percent of population
within the year 2006.
Table 2: Ad Hoc Characteristics of the PSA-Poverty Target Groups
The Extreme/ Chronically The Moderately Poor
Poor
Facing Extreme Hardship
Low Education
No Education
No Savings, May
possess some lowvalued non-durable
assets
No Savings and Assets (both
durable and non-durable)
Farmers with little
General workers with high
lands and low yields
family dependents such as
children, elderly, chronically
illed or disabled members
Peddlers
The Vulnerable
No higher than
secondary education
Little savings
No access to formal
credits
Farmers with
sufficient lands but
locating in high risk
areas
Table 2: Ad Hoc Characteristics of the PSA-Poverty Target Groups
The Extreme/ Chronically
Poor
Landless Farmers
The Moderately
Poor
The Vulnerable
Having jobs with high risk
of accident
Child Labors
Agricultural Temporary
Worker
Unemployed with no other
income
Workers with sufficient
income but unstable jobs
Middle-aged workers with
no modern skills
Petty Traders with no
permanent stores
Low-income earners lacking
ability to plan
III) POVETRY REDUCTION
APPROACHES AND POLICIES
The government to deal with poverty problems are:
3.1 Policy directly on poverty reduction
3.2 Policy on developing the quality of both poor
and society by means of securing housing of the
poor
3.3 Policy on natural resource and environmental
management
3.1 Policy directly on poverty reduction


Aims to implement at all levels namely
individual, community and national.
At individual level, the government emphasizes
particularly on expense reduction, increase
generation and opportunity provision.
3.1 Policy directly on poverty reduction

At the community level, the community
participation and learning process is
encouraged so as to mobilize people to
collaboratively solve problems and meet needs
of the community.
3.1 Policy directly on poverty reduction

Financial assistance is also made available to
ensure the poor have access to the fund. At the
national level, an attempt is made to reform,
restructure and manage land, natural resource,
and environment to be supportive of the poor.
3.2 Policy on developing the quality of both
poor and society by means of securing housing
of the poor
3.3 Policy on natural resource and
environmental management


Aims at the balance between the utilization and
conservation of the natural resources and
environment
should be done collaboratively by both
government and private sectors.
3.3 Policy on natural resource and
environmental management


The government takes the integrated approach
to mobilize all relevant government agencies to
concert their available resources combat to
poverty at all levels.
The Area-Function-Participation (A-F-P)
Approach is emphasized when implementing
poverty eradication activities at the grassroots
levels.
3.3 Policy on natural resource and
environmental management

A village or a community or Tambon (subdistrict) will be a development base for which all
government agencies concerned integrated their
services to help the poor to improve their
conditions and from which not only the poor but
other fellow men are encouraged to take part in
poverty reduction activities.
IV) STRATEGIES AND ACTION PLAN

The Government uses the Household Basic
Minimum Needs (BMN) data, which is collected
from rural households for every year, to
identify the households that have per capita
income per annum is lower than the poverty
line – 20,000 baht. As of April 2004, 1,388,994
households were identified to have lived under
poverty line and thus became the target group.

The Government has campaigned on the social
problem registration of the people who truly need
assistance to register during the period of March
2004.

The poor are encouraged to register their
problems across the country. The reports are
produced.

The community forums, both in rural and urban
communities, were conducted to verify the target
groups. As a result, there are approximately 7.62
million poor registered and subsequently 7.23
million verified after 70,881 forums conducted.

As for the urban communities, 1.06 million poor
registered but only 1.03 million poor verified
after 11,377 forums conducted.

The finding revealed that the registered poor
had the following problems.
 Landless – Lack of farmland
 Wanderer – Wandering homeless
 Illegal Occupations
 Students taking improper jobs
 Deception – deceived to be poor
 Indebtedness – people’s debt
 Homeless – lack of housing

These problems were informed to the related
government agencies for solving the problems.
During the period of one year, as of April 2,
2005. There were 2,476,442 out of 12,266,459 of
the registered poor from all areas and of all
categories were assisted (20.19%).
4.3 Integration and mobilization of all sectors.

The government established the “Center for
Fights against Poverty” in all involved
government agencies and at all levels, namely
national, ministerial, departmental,
provincial and district. The integrated
strategic development plans were encouraged
at the national, provincial and Tambon levels.

The government has provided
comprehensive assistance for all people at
the grassroots level inclusively. The
assistance is meant to support people in
expense reduction, income generation and
opportunity provision.
The Assistance generally includes the following:





Community Development Master Plan
(process and programs)
Community and Village Fund (One million)
One Tambon One Product (OTOP)
Poverty Alleviation Project
Provincial Integrated Development
Management (CEO)
The Assistance generally includes the following:






Land Reform
Savings Group for Production
People Bank
Health for All (30 Baht for all)
People Debt Management
Assets Capitalization
V) CONCLUSION

Using Community based approach, the Thai
Governments has attempted to provide
enabling facilities and resources to support the
people in both rural and urban communities
to work together to solve and meet personal
and community problems and needs,
respectively.
V) CONCLUSION

The people are also facilitated by both government
and civic sectors to act on the matters by
themselves through the community participation
and learning process. Having learned by doing or
action, people, the rich and non-rich alike, will
eventually gain more knowledge and skill, and thus
confidence, in managing their lives, as well as
communities.

As such, sustainable development seems achievable
in the case of Thailand.
Thank You