Thai Small-Enterprise Development Bank Sets High Loan Targets.

Byline: Soonruth Bunyamanee

Oct. 1--The Finance Ministry has set an ambitious three-year lending target for the new SMEs Development Bank, whose managers want legal protection against possible damages or losses that might result from carrying out government policy.

The bank, which is being upgraded from the Small Industry Finance Corporation (SIFC), has been told to lend 30 billion baht next year and 50 billion each in the following two years, said Nophadol Bhandhugravi, deputy director-general of the ministry's Fiscal Policy Office.

The targets are considered very ambitious, considering that the combined lending target this year for six state financial institutions, including the SIFC, is 50.5 billion baht.

Under an emergency plan to help small businesses that have been hurt by the global slowdown, the SIFC has been asked to provide loans totalling six billion baht between October and March. Three billion will be allocated to export-oriented clients, two billion to wholesale and retail firms and the remaining one billion to community enterprises. In the first nine months of this year, the SIFC lent less than two billion.

Mr Nophadol conceded that the short-term emergency lending target would be difficult to meet. "What we need is more participation of ...