It can be argued that increasing prudential standards will bring about a stronger
financial sector, which is necessary for a sustained recovery. However, given the country's
bankruptcy when the Baht was floated and the inevitable move into recession from measures
necessary to rebuild foreign reserves, the timeframe for achieving international prudential
standards was too short. This contributed substantially to the malfunctioning of the financial
sector. The adjustment package could have been sequenced better. The currency crisis
should be the primary focus at the beginning, and the timeframe for increasing prudential
standards should have been longer. This would put less additional pressures on the financial
institutions at the beginning of the crisis. They were under enough pressures already from the
higher Baht value of foreign debt and the recession that would occur anyway from the
adjustment program to deal with the currency crisis. Financial institutions are still now
struggling to increase capital, even with the government package on 14 August 1998, which
enabled the government to issue up to Baht 300 billion in bond to help with financial sector
re-capitalisation.