News Forum - Thailand News Today | Bank of Thailand to mount rescue of crumbling baht

[Thaiger]

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) is attempting to steer the baht and the economy through some tricky times. As the government is apparently out of ideas to jump- start the economy due to high debt, the responsibility has fallen to the central bank. The central bank’s recent move to raise the key policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 1% has, however, set some analysts wondering if the BOT had done enough to stem the rapid depreciation of the baht, caused by the widening gap between benchmark rates in Thailand and the United States. The Federal Reserve Bank has aggressively […]

The story Thailand News Today | Bank of Thailand to mount rescue of crumbling baht as seen on Thaiger News.

Read the full story

[EdwardV]

10 hours ago, Thaiger said:

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) is attempting to steer the baht and the economy through some tricky times.

That's because the government doesn't want to raise rates as it hurts growth which the country needs. At the same time, not raising the rates high enough hurts the exchange rate. The same rock and hard place many countries find themselves in right now. 

[MikeCoxsmall]

That's not even news at this point as the Bank of Thailand has been manipulating the Baht for the past six years. The reason this is news once again is that the Uber rich are now actually feeling the weakness of the Baht and demand that their minions at the Bank of Thailand protect them. 

[BillO]

It’ll be close to 40 against the dollar by mid November.

[Vigo]

Yes,  the baht has crashed against USD, but so have other currencies. The exchange rates for Euro/GBP to THB were similiar in 2017/2018 and people survived. The problem for Thailand and much of the world, is the strong US economy for past year. I suppose the world got used to USA being sidelined and weak during Trump regime as China devoured the world economy. Now the USA is back and recovering strength and other countries will have to clean up their lazy fiscal policies.

Of course  interest rates must be increased in Thailand. It's the tested strategy used to manage inflation.

 

Inflation was 6.4% in September, August - 7.9%. Annual average inflation rose to 5.2% in September (August: 4.8%). Meanwhile, core inflation was 3.1% in September. Consumer prices rose 0.22% in September, accelerating from August's 0.05% rise.   Source: FocusEconomics