A meeting of Thailand's parliament. (Photo: AFP/VNA) Bangkok (VNA) – Speaker of Thai House of Representatives ChuanLeekpai has called for the House’s special session on February 13 to repeat thesecond and third readings of the 2020 budget bill to comply with aConstitutional Court ruling.
It is hoped that the last two readings can be passed within one day but moretime could be set aside if needed, House secretary-general Sorasak Pienvej saidon February 7 after announcing Chuan’s decision.
If the special session cannot be concluded in one day, it is subject toexpansion until the entire bill passes the House, Sorasak said.
The third reading of the budget bill was passed on January 11 with 253 MPsvoting in favour, none against and 196 abstentions by opposition members.However, it was learned later that the votes of some MPs had been castelectronically even though they were not physically present, resulting in thebill being referred to the Constitutional Court.
The charter court later ruled that the budget was partially constitutional butordered MPs to vote again on the second and third readings to correct theproxy-voting error.
The budget bill will also need to go to the Senate again after it passes thelower house, but passage in the upper house will be a formality.
The 2020 fiscal year began on October 1, 2019. It had been feared that anyfurther delays to the passage of the budget could sharply curtail governmentspending at a critical time when the prospects of a severe economic slowdown arerising.
The Bank of Thailand (BoT) has slashed its basic interest rate to a record lowof 1 percent in an effort to shore up the economy which is hit by the novelcoronavirus (nCoV) epidemic and the months-long delay in the fiscal 2020 budgetbill.
In mid-December, the BoT downgraded Thailand’s economic growth forecast for2020 to 2.8 percent from 3.3 percent predicted in last September./.
VNA
