No Chim-Shop-Chai deadline for over 60s

The third phase of the government’s “Chim-Shop-Chai” (Eat-Shop-Spend) program has a special quota of 500,000 reserved for the Thai elderly, in addition to the already fully subscribed 1.5 million.

A spokesman says the Finance Ministry has not set a time frame for elderly people to subscribe so they won’t feel pressured to meet a deadline.

More than 90,000 seniors subscribed to the scheme on the first day, another 28.773 people on the second and 15,266 on the third day (Tuesday). Added to the 145,000 who joined as part of the main quota, the total number of senior subscribers has passed 280,000.

The Finance ministry is labelling social media comments that the program for seniors is a flop with low registration “simply untrue.”

The government offered first phase of “Chim-Shop-Chai” as an economic stimulus in September. Ten million people got 1000 baht to spend outside their home province, and 10-15% rebates for spending between 30,000-50,000 baht on domestic tourism. The scheme was a great success, with a million people subscribing online within a few hours each available day.

This was followed by the second phase of the scheme, for another three million people, in October.

SOURCE: Thai PBS World