“ELDERLY FUND”
AS OF THE FUNDING SOURCE FOR MONETIZATION OF THAI ELDERLY

Ratchaphon Amsuk
Lecturer at Department of Public Administration; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University (under the Royal Patronage), Thailand,
email: amratchaphon@gmail.com

Abstract

Nowadays, There are approximately 10,731,000 elderly persons or 15.8 per cent of all age groups (as of 2015) (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015), implying that Thailand is a completely aging society. As this situation, the biggest problem is the elderly cannot participate in the labour market and they will not get enough income for their retired life. However, The Aging Survey found that some of old age persons wish they could work and 38.4 per cent of elderly persons are still working, majority of them work as business owner without employees (National Statistical Office, 2014; Amsuk, 2015).

According to this situation, Thai government has concerned and tries to solve this financial issue. The government would like to support the elderly who cannot start up their own business because of the budget. Therefore, in 2003, the government provided the monetary fund, called “Elderly Fund” which was established under the Elderly Aging Act 2003 (Office of Promotion and Protection of the Elderly, 2011).
The objectives of this article are 1) to provide the basic information of the Elderly Fund as the funding source for monetization of Thai elderly and 2) to reveal the amount of the Elderly Fund that government has provided until now, and explain the method and qualification to assess the fund.

As the research, the Elderly Fund was established by The Aging Act 2003, the section 13. The Fund has been started the service for personal aging / group / elderly service centre / and organization which work for aging since 2007 (fiscal year)(Office of Promotion and Protection of the Elderly, 2011) and The Office of Promotion and Protection for Child, Youth, Disadvantaged and Elderly who operate the Elderly Fund. The Fund has supported and helped in 3 ways: 1) case of personal, 2) aging group and 3) case of project.
There are no significant difference of method to access to the loan of the Elderly fund between personal, group and project. However, personal and group must be Thai and aged 60 years or over. The project supports the government organization, private organization or aging organization.

The amount of fund shows the huge difference between personal, group and project, majority of elderly persons participate in the fund as the personal case. So the amount of money that support the personal case has been highest. The total amount that Elderly Fund has provided since 2005 - June, 2016 for all cases (personal, group and project) is 1,508.7 million baht (43.62 million USD). Average amount of the fund which is spent per year is only 167.33 million baht (4.83 million USD).

Keyword: Elderly Fund, Monetization, Thai Elderly