The Thai Economy: The Current State and the Way Forward Speech by Dr. Veerathai Santiprabhob Governor of the Bank of Thailand Japanese Chamber of Commerce (JCC) Thailand Dinner Talk 27 March 2019 JCC Board of Directors, JCC members, Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, Good evening to you all, Thank you very much for inviting me once again to give a talk at the Japanese Chamber of Commerce Thailand. This event is a great opportunity for us all to exchange our views and ideas on the Thai economy and its prospects as we move forward into the year 2019. Your opinions and feedback are undoubtedly valuable to policymakers, like myself, and I look forward to a very engaging session tonight. Japan and Thailand have been in long-standing diplomatic relations for more than 132 years—and even much longer from a trade perspective, dating back to as early as 1600s. Time has shown that while the Thai economy has encountered many challenging transitions, business partnerships between Japan and Thailand have continued to remain strong, fostering economic opportunities for both our nations throughout the present day. As you all know, this year is a very special one to all of the Thai people as well as the Japanese people as both our countries will hold national celebrations for our respective head of state in early May—to celebrate and honor the coronation of His Majesty the King Maha Vajiralongkorn and the ascension of Crown Prince Naruhito to the Imperial throne.
Over the past few years, manufacturers have invested heavily in machineries and systems to increase utilization of automation as evidenced by increasing robot installations in Thai factories4. Firms in non-manufacturing sector are also moving fast in adopting new technologies—from banks and telcos offering more efficient digital financial services; shops abandoning physical storefront and employing e-commerce and social-commerce platforms; and to firms advertising through social media platforms. To encourage further technological adoption and improve adaptive capabilities, to ultimately build resilience, it is also important that regulatory environment is conducive to fostering innovations. And it is with this goal of facilitating innovative environment that the Bank of Thailand took on a number of initiatives in recent years. These include  Continuing regulatory reform on foreign exchange regulations to remove outdated requirements, allow for greater flexibility in foreign exchange management, and improve ease of doing business;  Relaxing money transfer business ownership requirements to allow for greater competition and reduce cost of cross-border money transfer;  Streamlining our regulatory sandbox scheme to allow new fintech products to reach market faster;  Collaborating with the banking industry to explore use of central bank digital currency for domestic wholesale banking settlement operations; and  3 For instance, Thailand is ranked top ten in number of Facebook users according to Statista (2019). https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/  4 According to International Federation of Robotics, Thailand’s robot sales increased by over 30 percent between 2015 and 2017 and are expected to grow at an annual average of more than 20 percent over the next three years.