Domestic credit growth slowed to 6.8 percent in February while deposits grew by 6 percent. Contraction in economic activities further eased the pressure on prices, with headline inflation declined to a minus 0.2 percent in March. Given the sharp dislocation in economic activities in the last few months, market consensus now seems to agree on a small negative growth for Thailand this year, but with an improvement in growth next year. This means the market expects the Thai economy this year to go through a period of sharp adjustment on account of the global slowdown before growth is resumed next year. This view is consistent with the current mainstream view that, with the strengthening of the policy efforts at the global level, the world economy should look better next year compared to this year. As for the Bank of Thailand, our Monetary Policy Committee in its meeting next week, will also be going over this same question in assessing the near-term outlook for our deliberation of monetary policy. Whatever growth numbers we come up with, they will be conditional upon the prospects of the global economy going forward, especially after the G-20 announcement of the new global policy. Turning now to a more positive note, regardless of the adjustment we have to go through this year, or even next year, the Thai economy at this time is fundamentally stronger, and is in a better position to weather the crisis, compared with the situations we were in ten years ago during the Asian financial crisis.
3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  It has been said that regulators are pessimists in our DNA and always inclined to worry about things going wrong – and certainly, we cannot ignore the possibility of the failure of key FMIs no matter how remote, and this may occur in FMIs overseas. I started my speech this morning, noting the increasing connectedness between markets. This is true in the ‘life’ of a CCP - and can be true in its ‘death’ too. The failure of an internationally active CCP, that provides critical services in multiple jurisdictions, will have significant cross-border impact. When a CCP fails, its members are inevitably affected. Such members are likely to also have relationships with other financial institutions, or may trade and clear on other trading venues and CCPs. Through these network of interdependencies, the default of a CCP can trigger destabilising effects not only in the home market it serves directly, but outside of it. It is therefore important for authorities of jurisdictions that may be affected by a CCP’s failure to participate in that CCP’s resolution planning. Similar to the establishment of Supervisory Colleges to support ongoing supervisory co-operation, setting up Crisis Management Groups (CMG) for CCPs will allow the cross-border impact to be considered in resolution planning. In a failure situation, when resolution actions are time-sensitive, it may be necessary to limit the size of a CMG to enable efficient and effective discussions. But in normal times, resolution planning can benefit from a broader participation of relevant authorities.