The recovery in profitability has been driven by wider net interest margins, lower operating expenses and provisioning costs, and higher non-interest income. Interest rate spreads of Thai banks have increased steadily since 2000 in an environment of falling interest rates, a reflection of the substantially larger deposit base relative to the credit base as well as the fact that both lending and deposit rates have generally fallen in tandem. Thus, declines in effective interest costs have outweighed the fall in effective interest income (see Figure 11.). Given the limited opportunities available in terms of credit expansion, banks have also turned towards fee-based services to supplement their income (see Figure 12.). While this should continue to be an important source of revenue for banks in the future, banks are likely to increase their reliance on loan growth to boost income as investment growth picks up.