Figure 1 foreign exchange (FX) rate and interbank rate gap. Sourceการ : bank of thailand and us federal reserve. institutions. The strengthening of the us dollar relative to other major currencies starting in 1995 and china's rapid emergence into The world market also weakened Thailand 's competitiveness. In 1996, exports declined by about 1.3 % compared with over 20 % growth in both 1994 and 1995. The weakened fundamental led to Pressures on the bath and market perception was that the baht needed to be devalued, and speculators attacked the Baht in various Waves. What made matters worse was that the Bank of Thailand (BOT) tried to stubbornly defend the Value of the baht. By the end of June 1997 almost all of the country's reserves had been ilsd to try To defend the value of The baht and official foreign reserves net of committed forward obligations declined to only about $ Us 2.8 billion. The country basically became insolvent as there was still about $ Us 48.5 billion in short - term foreign debt and the current account deficit was about $ Us 1 billion per month. Thailand simply did not have enough foreign assets to service these obligations. As a result, the baht had to be floated on July B, 1997, and Thailand had to seek assistance from the IMF. 3. Immediate Resolutions The most immediate crisis resolution measure that was unavoidable because of the country's insolvency was the need to abandon the fixed exchange rate system and adopt a floating exchange rete system. Thailand 2 so needed foreign exchange liquidity support from the IMF. The IMF package mounted to $Us17.2 billion and was tied to IMF conditionality. Thailand was required to adopt many policy reforms, such as fiscal and monetary tightening, as well as structural reforms of the financial and real sectors, such as increased Prudential standards, improved governance, foreign access, and privatization. These various measures were meant to restore confidence as Well as generate increases in foreign currencies so that the county could eventually recover from the insolvency position-However, the nature of the IMF conditionality that was applied to Thailand (and also to Indonesia and south Korea ) Was rather controversial and was much debated in the aftermath of the crisis. critics point To a number of areas, such as ' : • the harsh nature of the tight fiscal and monetary policies without due regard for socialon political consequences; • unwillingness to a How non-market- based interventions such as controls on capital flows; • impositionof full guarantees for creditors of financial institutions; • imposition of relatively rapid structural reform measures, such as stringent financial st andards and corporaterestructuring as well as privatizetion of state - owned enterprises; and • lack of input from within the region so that the programs did not take sufficient account of the sociopolitical realities of the affected countries. Although many of these Criticisms are valid up to a point, there is no denying that once a country becomes ihsdvoh the solution will inevitably involve pain.The critical issue is how to turn around the foreign exchange position so that the country cab fully participate in the international economic 2nd financial system again, and what policies are necessary to do this with as little pain as possible. In Thailand, the macroeconomicassumptions behind the initial design of the IMF Program were flawed in that the IMF did not expect such a severe economic downturn or 2 rapid turnaround in the current account (sussongkam, 2002). Therefore, the initial fiscal and monetary targets were too stringent, and many otherconditions were imposed in order to reduce capital outflow (full guarantees for creditors), or to generate additional foreign exchange earning (Such as structural reform measures and privatization to attract foreign investment). As it become clear in 1998 that the macroeconomic assumptions were wrong, the fiscal position was eased substantially, but many of the other structural conditions continued to bemaintained even though the rationale for them to help in attracting foreign exchange no longer held.