nigelforbes

And a happy and cheery Sunday morning to you too BL.

When workers say, I don't want to pay tax and I don't want to pay Social Security every month, they are saying that they don't want to be part of the work force, they want to remain invisible. The government in turn says fine, we wont count you, go do your own thing. Just don't come crying to us for support when things get bad (as they did during covid) and don't expect the government to do anything about creating job opportunities or benefits for you. So the numbers stand, if you're in the system you get counted, if you're outside you don't, easy peasy, everyone's happy. Just nobody cry foul and say the system is unfair and not accurate, the grey market crowd made their bed, let them lay in it....they can cross over back, any time they want, up to them. And...one hour a week is one hour of work per week, thems the rules and the same consistent rules get applied every time. Next!

The seventh planet from the sun.

If you saying that Asean Now posters/readers don't use a majority of the 421 items in the Thai inflation basket and that instead they use different products and services, it's no wonder their inflation rate is high. But really, they do a majority of those items, at last normal families here do. Here's a part of the BOT inflation calculation for 2021, for one region, it will give you an idea what is contained in the calculation .https://www.bot.or.th/App/BTWS_STAT/statistics/BOTWEBSTAT.aspx?reportID=878&language=ENG

Done, you're good thru end first quarter.

You mean like Western airlines, Western utility companies and Western food suppliers. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/nov/30/uk-food-price-inflation-hits-new-high-of-124

Not quite. Thailand traditional operates a trade deficit, it certainly has for the nine months out of the past twelve. https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/balance-of-trade With regards to energy subsidies: Thailand operates an oil subsidy fund which allows them to keep consumer prices lower than they otherwise would be. That fund was long ago depleted, replenished with large government borrowings and is once again being slowly replenished, again. Lastly regarding the Baht: BOT has intervened in markets to smooth out the peaks and valleys of the exchange rate, that is their mandate under IMF managed float rules. They have not done that to manage oil/fuel prices which are managed via the above.

For information only. Pollsters have long known that the optimum size of an opinion poll is 1,100 people, anything less than 1,100 and the results of the poll are not representative of the entire population, anything more than 1,100 doesn't change the outcome. It is therefore not necessary to poll everyone in the country to establish, with a high degree of certainty, the answer to the question being asked. Similarly, statisticians and economists have proven that sampling 421 products and services in an economy provides a statistically certain answer regarding the rate of inflation. It is of course necessary to monitor the basket of goods and services and to swap in and out from time to time, those items that are under used. As with opinion polls, sampling less provides an uncertain answer and sampling more doesn't change the answer. One of the keys to why this is so accurate is that the same products are measured, at the same outlets, at the same date/time each month. On a separate point, just for information again, I casually asked my wife today if she had noticed increases in the price of chicken and pork. She said that she used to pay 190 a kilo for pork and in the past year it has increased to 230, about 18% increase. She shops at Makro and at the markets in Northern Thailand.

What is ridiculous is thinking that the price of every item sold every month, mist be measured, before the rate of inflation can be understood.

Inflation in every country is measured the same way, by recording the prices of the SAME few hundred items and measuring the difference. Those several hundred items include things that everyone here buys, it doesn't include some of the things that many Westerners buy. That's the way the system works, regardless of whether you care or not.

But the supplier in Europe will have increased their prices also because of inflation, as will the shipper. Makro is the last in the line, before you!

You are a Westerner, you may buy 75 items out of the basket of 471 items that measure inflation and 150 that are not. The fact that your 100 items have increased in price doesn't mean inflation for everyone in the entire country is the same as yours.

Regardless of perceived flaws in the way jobless are counted, the figures haven't changed MoM for a long long time.

The problem is the market was expecting 200k, not 270k, and with rate increases being what they were, that's not an unreasonable expectation. The fact the new jobs figure has been flat confirms the thinking that rate increases haven't trickled through yet. As also said, this is just one data set.. I bad, meant increase not reduction.

All imported goods increased in price, this isn't a function of Makro it's a function of the USD/THB exchange rate. A few months ago you would have purchased stock that was bought at perhaps 32, 30 or even 29. Last week you probably bought stock that was purchased at 37 or 38.

As the previous poster implied, it's the high cost of flights that is the problem. But that won't remain forever, as soon as demand ramps up, supply will increase and prices will return to competitive levels. When? Exactly! Until that happens, I would expect the bottom/middle end hotel market to do well and the top end to suffer, people have to compensate somewhere. I read recently where five stars were complaining that 3 stars were getting all the business and they were suffering as a result, that should surprise no one.

What did I miss? I read that GDP has increased, albeit exports have not due to poor demand although tourism has taken up the slack.

This is about USD movement, not THB rises or falls. Thailand is not dependent on tourism, Thailand is dependent on exports, of which, international tourism is one component at about 11% of GDP. (Yes, really, international tourism in an export in economics terms) And Thailand does not want to become an importer, that's the very last thing it wants. The Baht becomes strong because the current account remains in surplus. To accomplish that, Thailand needs to export more than it imports.

Nonsense, Thailand unemployment rate is 1.20%. There may be lots of vacancies but the problem is that the external work force from Myanmar and Cambodia, upon which the country relies for several industries, still hasn't returned in strength due to political and pandemic factors. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/thailand/unemployment-rate#:~:text=Thailand Unemployment Rate remained the,an average rate of 1.20%.

The problem of course is that when you've increased interest rates six months in a row and the last four of those increases were large, it is not unreasonable to expect to see some anecdotal impact such as a reduction in the number of new jobs added. When you see the opposite and more new jobs are added, one interpretation is that interest rate increases have had no impact on hiring. Another interpretation is that companies increase hiring in the run up to Xmas. But new job numbers is just a single data set, it's going to take more data sets to paint a more accurate picture. Personally, I'm sticking with a rate reduction of .50%, anything more is just too risky. In the meantime, I expect USD to remain flat or even rally, until more data arrives. Logically, equities should also remain flat or even fall. Earnings season begins in January and that will really tell the picture, many analysts are forecasting up to 30% falls in equities as a result of recession. But when did equities performance ever combine with logic!

I said earlier that it is 6.71%, the average CPI is 6.3% according to the IMF. https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/THA

Inflation is 6.71%, per the IMF.

https://tradingeconomics.com/thailand/current-account

You still don't understand how FOREX works, despite being given links, despite it being explained to you! Rates in Phyket are not lower than in Phuket, " If the banks web site shows real time rates, they will apply at that second, everywhere because all the branches use the same system." Even if the banks web sites don't show real time rates, the rates apply the same at all branches because they all use the same FOREX system.

THB is not one of the supported currencies, plus you need a US address or a Premier Account or similar. https://www.us.hsbc.com/checking-accounts/products/global-money/