The Cabinet has approved the Dairy Farming Promotion Organization of Thailand (DPO) to borrow 600 million baht at 0% interest to purchase raw milk, supporting dairy farmers in the DPO's dairy farming promotion areas.
On 28 April 2026, Ms. Ratchada Thanadirek, spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, revealed that the Cabinet meeting approved the proposal from the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives as follows.
1. Approval was given for the Dairy Farming Promotion Organization of Thailand (DPO) to borrow 600 million baht from the Farmers’ Aid Fund.
2. Approval was granted to allocate funds from the Farmers’ Aid Fund to the DPO for a 600 million baht zero-interest loan to implement the Phase 2 raw milk purchase project, with a repayment period of 7 years (2025–2032).
The project aims to enhance DPO’s financial liquidity and serve as revolving funds for collecting and purchasing raw milk from dairy farmers in the DPO’s five promotion regions: Central (Saraburi), South (Prachuap Khiri Khan), Northeast (Khon Kaen), Upper North (Chiang Mai), and Lower North (Sukhothai), covering 44 cooperatives with a total of 5,110 farmer members.
This Phase 2 project continues from Phase 1 after DPO faced severe financial liquidity problems in 2025 due to prolonged economic slowdown, which reduced consumer purchasing power and caused dairy product sales to fall short of targets. At the same time, production costs rose, and impacts from the Thai–Australian Free Trade Agreement and the Thailand–New Zealand Economic Partnership Agreement reduced import tariffs on dairy products and milk powder to zero. This led some operators to substitute imported milk powder for domestic raw milk. DPO responded by supporting farmers through Phase 1 by purchasing additional raw milk from those without sales outlets, helping to alleviate the overall problem.
"For Phase 2, the project aims to purchase 26,375,000 kilograms of raw milk per production cycle from DPO-affiliated dairy cooperatives. Farmers in the project can sell raw milk in three production cycles annually, totaling 79,125,000 kilograms over the 7-year project period (2026–2032)."