Establishment of
Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Coopperatives
In 1947 the Bank for Cooperatives was established to
serve as a source of funds for the cooperatives that
existed in Thailand at that time. The Bank carried out
its lending operations until 1966, when it was replaced
by a new Bank. The reasons for the change were as
follows:
The Bank for Cooperatives had no power to provide credit
to the majority of farmers who were not members of
cooperatives.
The Bank did not provide short term loans for crop
production.
The Bank was not able to consider loan applications.
The Bank did not supervise its loans and no government
agency carried out this function at that time.
The operations and organization of the Bank for
Cooperatives were not internationally known or
recognized. As a result the Bank did not have access to
foreign sources of funds and suffered from a shortage of
capital.
For these reasons, in 1966 the government established
the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC)
as a state enterprise under the jurisdiction of the
Ministry of Finance. The BAAC's mission was to extend
credit more widely, directly to individual farmers as
well as through farmer institutions.
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