Unlike the other central banks in the region, the Bank of Thailand (BoT ñ the central
bank of Thailand) does not carry an explicit statement of its primary objective in its Bank
of Thailand act. In practice, however, maintaining monetary and Önancial stability for
achieving sustainable economic growth has always been acting as the primary goal of the
BoT. On top of that, BoT has also announced the adoption of explicit ináation targeting
in May 2000.
To achieve its goal the BoTís monetary policy framework can be divided in to three
di§erent episodes. Before the 1997 Önancial crisis, BoT adopted the pegged exchange rate
regime as the anchor of its monetary policy.
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Unlike the Indonesian case, however, the
Baht value against the US dollar was announced and defended on a daily basis rather than
being determined annually.
The break of the 1997 crisis has forced BoT to áoat the exchange rate and adopting the
monetary targeting regime for conducting its monetary policy. As the case for the pegged
exchange rate management adopted previously, the liquidity management was also being
conducted on the daily basis to ensure against excessive volatility in interest rates and
liquidity in the Önancial system. In May 2000, BoT made an extensive reappraisal of both
the domestic and the external environment, and concluded to move on to adopting the
ináation targeting framework in conducting the monetary policy.
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The main cause for
the change was an assessment that the relationship between money supply and output
growth is becoming less stable, especially in the period after the major crisis where the
uncertainty in credit extensions as well as the rapidly changing Önancial sector took place
in Thailand. Under this framework, BoT implements its monetary policy by ináuencing
short-term money market rates via its key policy rate, the 14-day repurchase rate.