Thailand's high economic growth at 8-9 percent per year during the late 1980and early 1990s was interrupted by the "Asian Crisis" of1997-1998. Since then,average annual economic growth has moderated to less than 4percent.This moderation reflects a combination of some decline in export competitiveness to newly emerging regional economic,a shortage of skilled labor and knowledge workers for the modern knowledge economy,and political changes and uncertainty that have affected public and private investment. More recently,Thailand's economy expanded by a low 0.9 percent in 2014 and is expected to pick up slightly in 2015-2017.