The economic blow of Covid-19 will be felt in Thailand for nine more months, says Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
"We expect the impact on the economy to drag on for quite a while, not only three months, but possibly six or nine months," He said at a media briefing which happened after the cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
"We need to prepare measures to cope with that," he added.
Gen Prayut mentioned that he could be considering asking wealthy businesspeople to come together in addressing the economic fallout which has happened because of the Corona pandemic, he did this with the country's top 20 moguls last month.
The government has made a 1.97-trillion-baht relief package, the biggest program for the kingdom ever, to try to help the virus' economic hit.
One trillion baht is for cash to be handed out to people affected by the virus, public healthcare and economic and social rehabilitation.
Five hundred billion baht is allocated to the central bank's soft loan scheme for small and medium enterprises to give them a credit line of up to 500 million baht. 400 billion baht is for the Corporate Bond Stabilisation Fund.
In March, the Bank of Thailand forecast a 5.3% GDP contraction this year, compared with 2.8% growth previously predicted.
Gen Prayut has warned that stores that do not enforce disease-control antivirus measures will be closed.
The government has begun to relax the state of emergency measures and hope this can help with rehabilitating the economy of Thailand.
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