Virabongsa and Dhanin united in call for reserves

Meanwhile, Supachai Panitchpakdi, head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, said the global economy faced a serious downturn next year amidst a gloomy future for the World Trade Organisation’s move to promote pluralism through the Doha Round.
Asean should, therefore, strengthen its cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea, as well as create a single Asean Economic Community (AEC) regulation to facilitate trade and investment amidst rising non-tariff measures (NTMs), he said.
Speaking at the 92nd-anniversary celebration of the Commerce Ministry, Virabongsa said the excessive size of the country’s reserves had reduced potential economic growth in the past several years.
“We now have almost Bt1 trillion as a reserve, which should be spent on boosting the economy rather than doing nothing useful. The central bank should urgently spend to facilitate economic growth with an emphasis on boosting consumption and investment,” he said.
He suggested the government should focus on transportation and infrastructure development.
Moreover, with an expected slowdown of export growth this year and next, Virabongsa said the authorities should promote more trading with Asian countries to the west of Thailand, starting with Myanmar, India and the Middle East, as well as with other Asean nations.
Thai shipments to the continent rely too much on Eastern Asia, and notably Japan, China and Hong Kong, he said.
Dhanin supported Virabongsa’s proposed acceleration of spending the country’s reserves on development infrastructure.
“Next year, the global economy will be worse than it is this year. Thailand now has too high a reserve level and should urgently spend the money for developing our infrastructure in order to facilitate trade and investment growth of both the government and private sectors,” he said.
Spending should be on port development, transportation, logistics, dual-track railways and irrigation, he added.
Besides his concern about the global economy and rising NTMs, Supachai said the region should urgently formulate Asean trade competition regulations, as there are signs of a rising trend of mergers and acquisitions under the upcoming AEC.