the harsh nature of the tight fiscal and monetary policies without due regard for social political consequences;
unwillingness to allow non-market-based interventions such as controls on capital flows;
imposition of full guarantees for creditors of financial institutions;
imposition of relatively rapid structural reform measures, such as stringent financial standards and corporate restructuring as well as privatization of state-owned enterprises; and
lack of input from within the region so that 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 insolvent the solution will inevitably involve pain. The critical issue is how to turn around the foreign exchange position so that country can fully participate in the international economic and financial system again, and what policies are necessary to do this with as little pain as possible.
In Thailand, the macroeconomic assumptions behind the initial design of the IMF program were flawed in that the IMF did not expect such a severe economic downturn or a rapid turnaround in the current account (Sussangkarn,2002). Therefore, the initial fiscal and monetary targets were too stringent, and many other conditions 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 became clear in 1998 that the macroeconomic assumptions were wrong, the fiscal position was eased substantially, buy many of the other structural conditions continued to be maintained even though the rationale for them to help in attracting foreign exchange no longer held.
As the extent of net reserves depletion became more widely known, the baht depreciated rapidly, from 25.8 baht/$US at the end of June 1997 to about 53.8 baht/$US by the end of January 1998. The baht strengthened after that but the average exchange rate in 1998 was still about 41.4 baht/$US, a depreciation of about 38% compared with before the float. With the baht depreciation and the severe economic recession, the current account turned into a substantial surplus starting in the fourth quarter of 1997 and averaged over $US 1 billion per month through the end of 1999 (Table 1). As a result,net foreign reserves increased from about $US 2.8 billion in the middle of 1997 to about $US 16.2 billion by the middle of 1999. In August 1999, Thailand decided to forgo further disbursement from the IMF package, about 2 years after entering into the IMF assistance program. As a result, the various conditions imposed by the IMF no longer became binding. Thus, the rationale for imposing structural reform conditions that require a long time to successfully implement is not that clear.
Although Thailand's foreign exchange position turned around relatively quickly, it took much longer to clear up problems in the economy. The baht float put a severe strain on much of the financial and real sector. Because of the large depreciation of the baht, those with unhedged foreign debt were driven to bankruptcy, and country experienced