Final Remarks on the Future of the Thai Economy.
The Thai financial crisis was built upon macroeconomic imbalances of the country, and those imbalances were essentially attributable to the faulty structure of the nation’s financial sector. A financial restructuring thus became the first episode of its road to discovery. Beside that it would be ensured that a similar type of financial crisis would not happen again in the future, the financial restructuring would have an immediate or short term benefit to the economy as it would beef up the investors’ confidence to bring in credits or capital into the Thai economy in order to make the economy move again.
The next step was that Thailand needed to try to have a reliable and capable institution which could give it a safety net when such a crisis occurred. Unlike the Fed, the Bank of Thailand had a constraint on its foreign-currency reserves which were to be used to pay the nation’s debt. So the Bank of Thailand, at least in this ten or fifteen years, would not be able to function as a lender-of-last-resort. This job, therefore, needed to be given to a powerful international institution like IMF. The Bank of Thailand, however, should be reconstructed so that it became independent to the government in its policy making since politics was proved to be a crucial source of the unhealthiness of the economy.
Beside a strong financial structure and a good supporting institution in case of a future financial crisis, from this point on, Thailand needed to be careful in keeping things in a well order. For instance, current account deficit should not be much in excess of 5% of GDP especially if the deficit was financed in a way that could lead to rapid reversals according to the US Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers[4]; Banks should be restricted in how fast their borrowing could grow (Mishkin)[5].
6. Conclusion
To achieve Macroeconomic balances, great care and prudent policy management are needed. To be prudent was to be far-sighted and realistic. In the Thai financial crisis case, policies had not been prudently thought out. The collapse of the economy was a very tough lesson for the Thais. It would take long for the economy to recover. (It was predicted to be longer than that of Mexico concisely because the other countries of the region were also hit. Thus, Thailand could not gain much terms of trade after the devaluation of the baht to help improving its economy. Plus, the slow down of Japanese economy had made it unable to give much aid to Thailand unlike Mexico who had a huge support from the US for the road to its recovery.) But hopefully, during that long road, the Thais would maximally utilize the time to thought out wise policies and beef up a real strength so that when the next storm came, it would not turn over again.