Prior to this, only real estates and certain types of movable property can be used as collateral. With this new Act, a firm can further gain access to funding by putting up inventories, machineries, and intellectual property as collateral. Given this, Thailand’s small and medium enterprises, which constitute 95 percent2 of the total number of firms and make up 30 percent of total employment3, are expected to gain better access to credit, thus representing a better distribution of economic opportunity. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to reiterate that, although I group this set of laws as ones that promote governance and improvement in economic opportunity, in actuality, they all have positive spillover towards enhancing economic growth and productivity. After all, having a well-functioning capital market, better managed SOEs, a fairer and more competitive environment, and more access to credit will allow 1 Excluding activities to preserve national security 2 Source: The Office of SMEs Promotion, 2014 3 Average over 2015, National Statistical Office of Thailand calculated by the Bank of Thailand  4  greater efficiency among players both in the public and private sectors. I will now turn to the legislation that will help improve productivity. There are three laws in particular that I believe will be of your interest. First is the Licensing Facilitation Act, which is already in effect since July last year. The law intends to make acquiring a permit easier and more transparent for all businesses.
These reform efforts might result in short term setback, but will certainly result in long term gains that promote sustainability and further enhance our competitiveness and business partnership with foreign partners. My talk this evening on Moving Thailand Towards a New Business and Financial Landscape will consist of three parts. First, I will briefly discuss Thailand’s current economic development. Second, I will elaborate on several important sets of recently enacted and upcoming laws that will upgrade Thailand’s business and financial landscape. Lastly, I will briefly discuss Bank of Thailand’s policies to support the new business and financial landscape. With regard to the current economic development, we expect the Thai economy to continue its recovery at the rate of around 3.2% in 2017 in spite of headwinds from the global economy and market volatility. Our fiscal stimulus programs and accommodative monetary policy continue to support the economy while export growth started to show sign of a more broad-based recovery. Nevertheless, there are challenges ahead, especially from a high level of household debt, which moderates consumption growth 1  while private investment remains subdued. In addition, the mourning period might have temporarily dampened some of the economic activities. We expect them to resume normalcy in the near future as the fundamental strengths of the Thai economy remain intact. Notably, our unemployment rate continues to dwell at a low level, while external stability is sound, with current account surplus expected to be around 7 percent of GDP this year, declining from 10% of GDP in 2016.