Ministry to review welfare card rules

The Finance Ministry plans to review the eligibility criteria for state welfare cards, taking into account the planned increase in the minimum wage.
According to Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat, next year the ministry will review the eligibility criteria for receiving state welfare cards, opening registration for Thais wishing to apply.
He said the ministry will reassess whether the current criteria for receiving a welfare card is appropriate, given the proposed daily minimum wage hike from 300 baht to 400 baht.
Mr Julapun said the data needs to be reprocessed to determine qualifications for vulnerable groups, as some people may have earned enough to exit the vulnerable category, losing their eligibility for benefits.
Pornchai Thiraveja, director-general of the Fiscal Policy Office, said the Finance Ministry established a policy to review the eligibility of state welfare cardholders every two years.
The most recent review took place in 2022, with the next review scheduled to begin this year.
However, recent flooding has focused efforts on assisting people in affected areas. As a result, the new registration review was postponed to early 2025, said Mr Pornchai.
The government wants to raise the minimum wage to 400 baht per day, initially targeting implementation this month.
However, disagreements between employers, employees and government representatives on the tripartite committee have delayed this timeline.
The main criteria for receiving the state welfare card is having personal and family annual income that does not exceed 100,000 baht. This figure is calculated based on a minimum wage of 300 baht per day.
In the latest registration round for the state welfare card in 2022, the number of eligible recipients tallied 13.5 million, down from 14.9 million the previous round.
The reduction in eligible recipients was attributed to the death of some beneficiaries.
The 2022 eligibility criteria were also revised to include family income as a factor.
For example, if a registrant is a housewife with no personal income, but her husband has sufficient income or assets to support the entire household, and if the family’s total income averaged per person exceeds the threshold of 100,000 baht per person per year, the housewife would not qualify for a welfare card.
Other eligibility criteria remain the same, including: must be a Thai national age 18 or older; and cannot be a monk, novice, inmate, resident of a care facility, civil servant, government employee, pensioner, or member of parliament or senator.
Financial assets, such as deposits, bonds and other debt instruments, must not exceed 100,000 baht per person per year to claim eligibility for a state welfare card.
Other criteria include not having loans exceeding set limits, such as no more than 1.5 million baht in home loans, 1 million baht in car loans, no credit cards, and no property and land ownership rights exceeding limits set by the Finance Ministry.