The Thai baht will continue to maintain its strength for the rest of 2020. It will remain strong, propelled by the increased surpluses in the Thai current account and the country’s trade balance.

Kobsidthi Silpachai, KBank’s head of capital markets research, predicts that the Thai baht will float around 29.75 against the US dollar for the first half of 2020, and then appreciate to 29.25 at the end of the year, said

Reuters report that the Thai baht was Asia’s star-performance currency during 2019, rising by more than 7% against the greenback.

The baht continued to leverage off the country’s massive current account surplus over 2019, rising inflows of tourism revenue and the near-record foreign reserves – all this despite subdued local economic growth. The foreign reserves made the Thai baht the go-to currency for investors with with its ‘safe haven’ reputation for actual investment or speculation.

Thailand’s current account surplus totalled $33.2 billion as of last November, accounting for 5.3% of GDP, according to the Bangkok Post. The country’s trade surplus with the US was $19 billion for last year. Thailand’s GDP growth is forecast to be around 2.7% this year.

An adjustment to ease loan-to-value (LTV) regulations is not forecast to massively rev up sagging property sales as the purchasing power of Thais is being tempered by elevated household debt – some 79% of GDP.

The Bank of Thailand eased the tightened LTV rules governing mortgage lending which shortens the minimum debt-servicing period for first mortgages required for those seeking a second loan for homes priced below 10 million baht.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post

Thailand’s trade surplus with the US has now exceeded US$20 billion. Bloomberg reports that this could trigger the Thai currency to be added to the US Treasury’s watchlist of “currency manipulators”.

According to US Census Bureau data, the surplus reached US$20.05 billion in the 12 months up to the end of November 2019. That exceeds a $20 billion upper limit the US Treasury has set for bilateral goods trade deficits, and means Thailand now violates two of the three criteria needed to add the strong south east Asian economy and currency onto its watch list.

This latest development will increase scrutiny on Thailand’s currency policies. At the same time Thai’s senior finance officials have been working to rein in the baht’s 8% rise against the US dollar since the start of 2019, the fastest appreciation among major Asian currencies. The US is Thailand’s third-biggest trading partner.

Veerathai Santiprabhob, the Bank of Thailand Governor, speaking yesterday with Bloomberg, says that Thailand is engaged in a close dialogue with US officials about Thailand’s performance on key measures used to evaluate a “currency manipulator. He says Thailand is yet to verify a an alleged breach of the $20 billion trade surplus threshold with its own official data.

Veerathai also mentioned that the baht’s progress against the USD in 2019 should show that “no one should consider Thailand as one that has tried to manipulate” the currency to gain an export advantage.

In a May 2019 report by the US Treasury, three south east Asian nations – Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam – were cited for the first time with two violations each, while Thailand was charged with one: for its high current-account surplus.

SOURCE: Bloomberg

Many CEOs, based in Thailand, don’t expect Thailand’s economy to improve during 2020. Many surveyed cited global economic uncertainties, according to the “CEO Survey” of 100 individuals. The survey was conducted by Krungthep Thurakit newspaper a month ago.

Around 68.4% of the respondents didn’t expect the economy to improve this year, while 31.6% were saying that the economy would fare better this year. In other words, the pessimism vastly outweighs the optimism for the next 12 months by a factor of more than 2:1.

Of those who did not expect an improvement, 29.6% said the economy was expected to slow down, while 25.5% expected the economy to flatline. Meanwhile, 40.2% of the respondents said that digital disruption would pose more business challenges over the next 12 months this year.

Of the total, 81.6% said they would go ahead with business plans while 51.5% would focus on developing business platforms for new revenue sources.

For Q3 and 4 last year the Thai stock exchange revealed listed company executives in a CEO Survey, called Economic Outlook, predicted that the Thai economy in the second half of 2019 would grow. With sentiment down from the previous survey, it expected that in the year 2019, the Thai economy will grow in the range of 2% to 3%

They predicted the Thai economy in the second half of 2019 would be strongly supported by domestic factors, both fiscal policy and government spending, better Thai political stability, and tourism.

SOURCE: The Nation