What's *really* Happening In The Thai Economy?

[organic]

All the GNP figures show strong year-on-year growth, but are they painting a real picture?

My work is within the tourist area and all over the country tourism has had 2 terrible years. Loads of my friends, some with long-established businesses, have gone bust, those that haven't (myself included) are prepared for a very grim low season.

Outside tourism, last year I went with my ex- to Bkk and while there we visited a couple of hairdressing salons where she used to work in Saphan Yai (sp?), and neither had a single customer while we were there, yet only a year before they had massive queues and couldn't find enough staff.

Land prices still seem to be rising and in some places fetching silly money (a mate recently brokered a deal for 2 rai at 15m baht on Koh Lanta, nowhere near the beach), yet in Bkk and Chiang Mai there are plenty of unfinished, abandoned buildings.

Almost every Thai person I know seems to have a shiny new pickup and the latest gadget-ridden mobe, presumably on credit.

Any ideas what those growth figures actually represent?

[thaihome]

Amazingly enough there is a lot more to the Thai economy then tourism and hair salons. Just to mention a couple, there is large manufacturing sector as well as a huge agriculture business.

TH

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Amazingly enough there is a lot more to the Thai economy then tourism and hair salons. Just to mention a couple, there is large manufacturing sector as well as a huge agriculture business.

TH

Tourism out of Australia is at record levels. A couple of Ran Tat Phoms that are out of favor with the clientele, is hardly an economic barometer. The profit prophets are out and about again.

[organic]

Thailand's economy was one of the standouts in Asia last year, growing by more than 6 percent. With steady demand from China for electronic parts, petrochemicals and rubber, Thailand can expect even higher growth this year, said Supavud Saicheun, chief of research at Phatra Securities.

This is from another thread in the News Clippings forum and could well explain where the growth is.

BTW I wasn't trying to suggest hairdressers are a mainstay of the Thai economy, but rather that if they were struggling, that could well mean people in an ordinary Bkk suburb don't have much spare cash.

[sbk]

Everywhere I go I see people buying new trucks and cars, people I know well. People I know do not have the money to buy these things. Where is the money coming from?

Pre-economic crisis the local bank manager was signing out loans to unqualified people in exchange for a percentage of their loan. Apparently this was going on all over the country, hence the collapse due to bad debt. Perhaps we are just seeing the same old thing being repeated again.

Same same but not different?

[Georgie-Porgie]

T.I.T. This is Thailand!

[Guest timbee]

organic's barometer is perfectly valid if he's measuring low class consumer behaviour ... broaden it a bit with a survey of restaurants and pubs as indicators of the same quality.

the upshot is that all, indeed, is not as it seems:

1. easy consumer credit from banks who must lend savers' deposits to stay afloat

2. rich former bankrupts who were not pursued and who are now rehabilitated

3. a rash of investments from deep-pocketed multinationals able to stretch the time-horizons on profitable return

4. a surfeit of vacant and unsold property

5. a government whose favorite monetary weapon is supply-side pumping

6. a majority of pleasure seeking people with a poor understanding of domestic financial planning

7. a ruling class whose financial cynicism knows no bounds

thailand's loose monetary policy is akin to reagan or thatcherite economics; only it is coming on the heels of 1997 and a bunch of cracks that have yet to be plugged; ergo, strap down, coz more of the same old same old's coming when this party's over.