September 19, 2007

By Amrit Pal 

The developing Asian economies will attain an 8.3 percent growth in 2007, driven by fast growth in China and India, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) informed on monday. The ADB said China and India account for 55.3 percent of the total gross domestic product (GDP) in developing Asia. The two countries also recorded their fastest growth in 13 years in the first half of 2007 and 18 years in fiscal year 2006.

However, Thailand's economic growth ranks among the lowest not only in Asia but in Southeast Asia as well since the domestic demand and investment have slumped in the past couple of years. While other economies like Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam (apart from India and china) are booming, taking the average growth to 5.6% in the region, Thailand is trailing  behind at about 4%. According to the Bank of Thailand (BoT) governor Tarisa Watanagase, Thailand's economic growth in 2008 would be around 4.5-6 per cent. Projections on Thai economic growth in 2008 is still maintained at 4.5-6 per cent due to planned government investment in mega-projects which is expected to stimulate investment by the private sector and the disbursement of government spending for fiscal 2008 beginning October 1 this year, said Mrs. Tarisa.

On the contrary, while ADB has upgraded economic growth forecast for the region, it left Thailand's GDP growth prediction unchanged. ADB forecasted Thai GDP in 2007 and 2008 at 4 per cent and 5 per cent respectively, which remains unchanged whereas the forecast for Southeast Asian region economic growth has been increased from 5.6 per cent to 6.1 per cent.

Content navigation