elieve it might even be fiddled with until it dies, like an exotic beetle that succumbs to the poking and prodding of a curious child. The original proposal was for all 50 million or so Thais over the age of 16 to be given a one-time handout of 10,000 Thai baht (about US$285), to be spent within four kilometres of the recipient’s residence on food and other necessities — alcohol and other sins are out — with a time limit of six months. (The four kilometre rule immediately raised hackles: almost 50 per cent of Thais still live outside urban areas and retail options within four kilometres of home are often very thin on the ground.) The handout would come in the form of a digital wallet using blockchain technology delivered to the beneficiary’s smartphone. It would be another step for Thailand toward a national blockchain-powered financial system. However, those who don’t yet have a smartphone would be able to register for the program with their national identification number and receive a code to spend the money. Retailers, for their part, must be ‘part of the tax system’. If the retailer is ‘outside’ the tax system and not registered for VAT, as many small operators in Thailand are, the digital currency cannot be exchanged for Thai baht directly but they can still use it to buy supplies from sources ‘inside’ the tax system. The bottom line is that the scheme actually kills at least four birds with one stone: it puts money in people’s hands to spend and stimulate the floundering economy; it gives retailers a helping hand; it gets more people habituated to using digital payments; and it is another building block in Thailand’s highly advanced digital infrastructure. So what could possibly be the problem? The scheme is now coming under serious scrutiny from skeptical politicians and economists but the government is insisting that it is still aiming for its implementation in the first quarter of next year. And that in itself is a little bit weird: when you distribute money to the general populace with the goal of stimulating the economy, you want to be doing it quickly. The original goal implementation date of 1 February 2024 now looks like it is off the table and Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who is also the Finance Minister, was quoted in the national daily The Nation on October 25 as saying only that “we’ll try to get it implemented as soon as possible.” Even it does kick off toward the end of the first quarter, that’s very distant and in any event, no one really knows what kind of shape the economy is going to be in three months from now. Would it be too late to have any positive impact? Or would it be unnecessary by then? Thailand is a nation that relies heavily on things it can’t control, such as tourism and external demand for its exports, so forecasting is fraught with uncertainty. But maybe that is the point: distributing money to domestic consumers is something the government does have control over. But the timing is only one challenging aspect of the proposal. The scattershot approach of handing out money to everyone, rich and poor, is attracting criticism from economists who say it is wasted on the rich and inflationary as well. Thus, it seems certain that there will be an income ceiling for eligibility. Such an eligibility threshold — and there is another public debate about what constitutes ‘rich’ — would lower the cost of the program from its original estimate of 560 billion baht (about US$16 billion) which is a little over 3 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product (GDP). Even so, critics of the scheme are asking pointed questions about how the program will be funded. Don’t worry, we’ve formed a committee As is usual in Thailand when there is a big policy to implement, the government forms a committee to mull it over. Interestingly though, even the country’s central bank, the Bank of Thailand, which has been piloting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the past year, isn’t at all rapt in the stimulus proposal and has spoken out against it. The governor of the Bank believes the stimulus would be too temporary and also inflationary. For their part, the nation’s retailers have been pretty quiet. Retailers could use a boost Retail sales have not been good in recent months and could use a boost. The Bank of Thailand’s latest retail sales report is for August and it didn’t make for pleasant reading: sales were down 2.1 per cent on a year-over-year basis and the weakness was particularly acute in big-ticket items that ride heavily on consumer confidence. Specialty store sales in categories such as audio and video, electrical appliances and hardware slumped heavily. Internet sales were down more than 12 per cent. Health and beauty was a notable bright spot (up 5.6 per cent) and stores that sell a variety of goods focused on necessities like food also held up well. A whole slew of retailers are set to report their third-quarter results and these are being awaited with very keen interest. It’s in this context that the government is trying to get its stimulus over the line, but there are other fish to fry apart from putting spending power in people’s hands. One, for sure, is advancing the CBDC: Thailand is arguably closer than any country in the world to having one. Part of prepping people for that is to get more of them habituated to paying for goods and services digitally. Given Thais’ love of smartphones and growing comfort with digital payment systems, particularly since 2020, the government may not have a hard sell.