Dear Peter,
A note of summary on the comments made at the meeting at BOT this morning.
2. BOT Governor invited comments from the floor which will be taken into account in BOT’s formulation of the plan for the next stage of FI system development after the completion of the current 5 years plan in 2014. The comments offered by the participants focused on the following issues : -
2.1 competing in hiring able personnel between the banks in Thailand, shallowness of the pool of talents in Thai banking industry ;
2.2 inadequacy of Thai legal infrastructure to facilitate Thai banking business development & promote growth, e.g., lack of richness in the forms of collaterals that could be created, slow legal enforcement process of mortgage enforcement, debt recovery, judgment execution against debtors’ assets,
2.3 too many banking regulatory obstacles/conditions/requirements affecting rolling out of derivatives imbedded products to Thai market ;
2.4 multiple layers of regulatory control/supervision under a multitude of statutes governing Thai banking industry ;
2.5 need of regulatory support and drive to promote e-/mobile-banking service delivery channels with a view to reduce the cost of providing physical banking services ;
2.6 exchange control restrictions to offshore retail investors seeking to bring their capital to invest into assets in Thailand, e.g., property market ;
3. In his closing note, BOT Governor commented on the economic health of Thailand in the midst of political uncertainty in which a solution is insight (reference to the declaration of martial law which occurred at 3 am last night) :
3.1 in the current political uncertainty, BOT would not be too strict with banks on their classification of loan accounts ;
3.2 at macro level, BOT doesn’t see any signs of misalignment between the various indicators and the real sectors ;
3.3 BOT sees no sign of unusual or abnormal movement in Thailand’s capital account ;
3.4 BOT sees no sign of panicky sentiment in Thai markets ;
3.5 With CPI at 2.5%, BOT holds the view that policy interest rate should be maintained at 2% which would be “accommodating enough” ;
3.6 The only sign BOT spots is adverse sentiment caused by the political uncertainty. BOT Governor believes that once this sentiment becomes positive, a quick turn around could be expected.
Best regards,