Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Pheu Thai announces its biggest giveaway yet

Image credits: Pheu Thai Party Facebook Page

Pheu Thai leader and PM candidate Julapun Amornvivat raised eyebrows when he announced a new policy to give out one million baht to nine people every day. One person each day would be selected from the following four groups: those who file personal income tax forms, people aged 60 and older, registered farmers, and public volunteers. The other five would come from those who have VAT receipts.

What is the rationale for such a policy? From Prommin Lertsuridej’s defense of this policy, as summarized by the Thai Enquirer:

Under the proposal, nine people would receive 1 million baht each day, funded by an annual prize budget of 3.285 billion baht, as an incentive for taxpayers, registered groups and consumers to participate in the formal economy.

Prommin said that if Thailand could increase tax intake by just over 10%, the state would gain about 100 billion baht a year, compared with current value-added tax revenue of 800–900 billion baht annually, making the policy a worthwhile investment.

Or as Pheu Thai puts it on their website: “this policy is the smartest investment…if the VAT tax base increases by 20 percent, equivalent to the Taiwanese model, the government’s revenue would increase by 200 billion baht annually.”

Quite the policy announcement, isn’t it? Predictably, other parties have a lot of thoughts. The People’s Party deputy leader Sirikanya Tansakun said that with relatively few people benefiting each year, there may be insufficient incentive for those in the informal economy to join the scheme. Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said that he would rather invest the money into skills development.

But let’s just discuss the electoral implications first. It is clear that Pheu Thai has not dropped its traditional playbook of promoting eye-catching economic policies. I thought it would have been virtually impossible to top the 10,000 baht giveaway that Pheu Thai used as its flagship policy in 2023, but they’ve somehow managed to go two digits bigger this time. But there are two major differences between what they’re proposing this year and previous rounds of what critics have dubbed economic populism.

For one, this is the first time Pheu Thai is proposing a major policy under the shadow of public doubt about its ability to fulfill its promises. In a way, it is the 10,000 baht policy that could prove to be the undoing of the 1 million baht giveaway’s electoral effectiveness. After all, it never happened at the scale that Pheu Thai promised, as in the end it was limited mostly to vulnerable groups. “Pheu Thai can do it” is the party’s slogan this year, but the fact that their most memorable policy of 2023 remained largely unfulfilled may indeed prompt some voters to harbor doubts.

The other major difference between the 10,000 baht and one million baht policy concerns its scope: the former was supposed to be guaranteed to every Thai above the age of 18, while the latter depends on random chance. Even Bhumjaithai’s Khon La Khrueng Plus covers a reasonable swathe of voters. So even if you want to be a millionaire, you would still have to contend with the roughly 0.0046 percent chance a year that you would receive the giveaway. Can the probability of winning the lottery motivate people to vote for Pheu Thai? (Let’s also not forget that Pheu Thai lost the 2023 election despite promising a guaranteed 10,000 baht — so even that wasn’t enough).

It’s worth taking a moment to recall Pheu Thai’s key policies this year: before the one million baht giveaway, they have also announced an informal debt forgiveness scheme, an income top-up to ensure every person makes at least 3,000 baht a month, and a Khon La Khrueng Pro Max scheme where the government would subsidize 70% of the cost of payments at participating SMEs. None of this has, so far, moved the needle much for Pheu Thai’s numbers, as we saw in previous national polls. Even if the one million baht giveaway can shift some voters, the party still has a lot of ground to make up.