Amendments to the Agricultural Land Reform Act were approved by the cabinet yesterday. The act has been in force for 40 years and the amendments are designed to narrow land ownership disparity and maintain existing land for agriculture.
They will also allow the agricultural land reform fund to pay farmers if they choose to quit farming and return their land plots.
At the moment , the fund controls about 1 billion baht, which is available to buy land plots under the scheme from farmers and their heirs.
An assistant minister to the Prime Minister’s Office, said that the amendments will also allow the Agricultural Land Reform Office to buy land plots outside the agricultural land reform scheme from general people who want to sell their land to allow allocation to farmers in need.
Currently, there are about 8 million farmers or 2.1 million families holding 34 million rai under the agricultural land reform scheme.
This represents 25% of the country’s total agricultural land.
The Prime Minister said at yesterday’s cabinet meeting that there was no need to introduce any fresh stimulus measures to offset the slowdown in activity during the mourning period and repel downside risk in the fourth quarter.
The premier also stated that he still believed the myriad of measures already introduced to help small and medium-sized enterprises would be sufficient to stimulate economic growth in the remaining months.