Bangkok  - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva plans to propose liberalizing lending by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to crisis-hit developing countries at next month's Group of 20 summit, media reports said Wednesday.

"The World Bank and IMF should come to the aid of emerging-market economies without conditions," Abhisit said in an interview with Thailand's Nation newspaper.

The premier, in his capacity as chairman of the 10-country Association of South-East Asian Nations, is to attend the summit of the world's largest economies April 2 in London.

One of the topics for debate was expected to be calls to at least double the IMF's emergency funding to 500 billion dollars as it has been hit by rising loan requests amid the world economic crisis.

Thailand had to appeal to the IMF for a bailout in 1997 at the start of the Asian financial crisis, but the bailout came with many painful and politically unpopular conditions, such as limits on fiscal spending and requirements to reduce the number of banks and finance companies in Thailand.

Many Asian economists have complained that the Washington-based IMF has not applied the same conditions to the current financial crisis, which sprang from the United States.

"The IMF now is doing something completely opposite to what they did in 1997," said Chalongphob Sussangkarn, a former Thai finance minister and distinguished fellow at the Thailand Development Research Institute, a think tank.

"When they came here in 1997, they set all sort of conditions, but now they are telling the advanced countries, 'Just take our money,'" Chalongphob said.

Abhisit said he also would propose that members of the G20, which account for more than 80 per cent of the world's economy, to set specific targets for fiscal spending.

"Without the target, it would not bring about any clear-cut result," Abhisit told The Nation. "Otherwise, we can just talk without anything happening."

On Tuesday, Abhisit announced plans to spend 1.4 trillion baht (39 billion dollars) from 2010 to 2012 to stimulate the Thai economy, which has been hard-hit by declining exports.

The stimulus package is to be financed by foreign loans. (dpa)