. The currency crisis
should be the primary focus at the beginning, and the timeframe for increasing prudential
standards should have been longer. This would put less additional pressures on the financial
institutions at the beginning of the crisis. They were under enough pressures already from the
higher Baht value of foreign debt and the recession that would occur anyway from the
adjustment program to deal with the currency crisis. Financial institutions are still now
struggling to increase capital, even with the government package on 14 August 1998, which
enabled the government to issue up to Baht 300 billion in bond to help with financial sector
re-capitalisation.