__Another crucial mistake of the authorities was their decision to liberalize capital flows
across borders while sticking to a fixed exchange rate system and also trying to pursue an
independent monetary policy. This is, of course, the classic Mundell “impossible trinity”
(Mundell, 1963).
Thailand had successfully used a fixed exchange rate system since the end of the
Second World War. This had contributed to economic stability and was an important
foundation for economic growth for many decades. However, these successes were mostly in
a global environment of modest financial capital flows. The mistake was to stick to this old
paradigm in the 1990s when capital flows became very large and very volatile.
Before the crisis, the baht was fixed to a basket of currencies with the US dollar having
by far the largest weight in the basket resulting in a fairly stable baht/$US rate for many years
before the crisis. However, Thailand also tried to pursue an independent interest rate policy.
This can be seen from the gap between the Thai overnight interbank rate and the US overnight
fed fund rate. This gap averaged about 3.97% between January 1989 and June 1997 (the last
month before the float of the baht), and sometimes reached up to 10% (see Figure 1). With
liberalized capital flow, this inevitably led to a large amount of capital flow into Thailand.
Net capital inflows between 1990 and 1996 averaged 10% of GDP each year; much
higher than the average current account deficit of about 7% of GDP for the same period. As a
result, the outstanding external debt rose rapidly from $US29 billion in 1990 (34% of GDP) to
$US108.7 billion in 1996 (59% of GDP). Even more dangerous was the fact that short-term
foreign debt (with a maturity of less than 1 year) increased very rapidly. By the end of 1996,
the total short-term foreign debt was about $US47.7 billion, which was larger than the amount
of official foreign reserves at the time that was about $US38.7 billion. Even after taking into
account the foreign assets of the banking system, the total foreign assets (official and private)
were less than the amount of short-term foreign debt of the country. If these short-term foreign
debts were not rolled over, there would not be enough foreign assets in the country to service
these debts.
The rapid growth of short-term foreign debt was tied to the provisioning requirement
for risky assets of the Basel Capital Accord. For lending to financial institutions in developing
countries, short-term lending only requires 20% provisioning whereas long-term lending
requires 100% provisioning. Because of this, there was a built-in incentive for short-term
lending to developing countries.
The large capital inflows spurred an investment and real estate bubble. Financial
institutions were lending excessively and imprudently, leading to rapidly deteriorating asset
quality. The central bank made matters worse by trying to shore up ailing financial
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 baht 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 used to try to defend the value of the baht and official foreign reserves net
of committed forward obligations declined to only about $US2.8 billion. The country
basically became insolvent as there was still about $US48.5 billion in short-term foreign debt
and the current account deficit was about $US1 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 2, 1997, and Thailand had to seek assistance from the IMF.