Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

and Sri Lanka. Then, the Greater Mekong Sub-region
(GMS) that was built in 1992 under the support of Asian
Development Bank (ADB) is an economic cooperation
among the countries of the Greater Mekong Sub-region
(GMS). The GMS members are Thailand, Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia, Burma, and the Yunnan Province
of China. This agreement covers the programs in
agriculture, investment, natural resources management,
environment, and human resource development.
THAI ECONOMY AND TRADE
PERFORMANCE
In the globalization era, no country in the world does
apply the closed economy. The trading countries open
their markets to overseas products and competitors. The
differences are in the level of openness and protection
policy, where some countries are less protective than
others by imposing high tariffs and non-tariffs barriers
on the traded goods to protect their sensitive sectors and
domestic markets. Since 1990s, the Thai economy has
created its economy to not only focus on rural sectors
but also on urban sectors such as higher-technology
manufacturing and services. Thailand has moved from
an import substitution policy to a strategy that more
Table 1: Thai Economic Features (in millions USD).
THE STATE, DEVELOPMENT AND GLOBALIZATION
Source: 1/ From January 1999 onwards, all items are categorized under the 1996 revision of the 10-digit
harmonized code.
Source: Bank of Thailand, 2004.
241
closely based on a global market. Thailand has developed
its economy to be competitive in the globalization era by
reducing and eliminating trade barriers to get optimal
gains from trade.
Thailand has experienced impressively high rates of real
GDP growth over most of the last 30 years, averaging
nearly 8% a year in the 1960s, 7.9% a year in 1975-
79 and a remarkable 9.1% in 1987-95. But, when the
economic slowdown began in 1996, the Thai GDP
growth fell to 5.9%, and then the GDP contracted by
1.4% in 1997. The economic turmoil continued and
pushed the economic growth down to be -10.5% in
1998, the worst recession in Thailand over decades
(see Table 1 for details). Thai economy was one of the
suffered economies hit by the Asian financial crisis.
Then, the regional economic downturn came up and
spread over Asian countries from this country. The
weaknesses in Thai financial sectors were in charge in
spurring the crisis. Over time, Thai economy bounced
and recovered from the economic problems after
Thai government issued some economic policies and
invited international institutions such as International
Monetary Fund (IMF) to take apart in rescuing the
economy. The Thai economy got well relatively faster
than other Southeast Asian economies.
1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
P opulation (millions) 58.44 59.24 59.28 59.90 60.50 61.20 61.80 61.88 62.31 62.80 63.08
GDP at c onstant
1988 price
97,587.2 107,076.5 118,047.2 122,941.5 97,947.6 66,465.7 75,898.0 74,916.9 69,090.2 75,326.3 83,257.7
(% change) 8.3 9.0 9.2 5.9 -1.4 -10.5 4.4 4.8 2.1 5.4 6.8
GNP per c apita
(USD)
2,123.7 2,420.1 2,781.9 2,965.5 2,424.5 1,764.1 1,928.7 1,933.7 1,804.3 1,966.0 2,196.5
Inflation 3.4 5.0 5.8 5.9 5.6 8.1 0.3 1.6 1.6 0.7 1.8
E xport 36.6 44.7 55.7 54.7 56.7 52.9 56.8 67.9 63.1 66.1 78.1
(% change) 13.4 22.1 24.8 -1.9 3.8 -6.8 7.4 19.5 -7.1 4.8 18.2
I mpo rt 45.1 53.4 70.4 70.8 61.3 40.7 47.5 62.4 60.6 63.4 74.3
(% change) 12.3 18.4 31.9 0.6 -13.4 -33.8 16.9 31.3 -3.0 4.6 17.4
Trade balance -8.5 -8.7 -14.7 -16.1 -4.6 12.2 9.3 5.5 2.5 2.7 3.8
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows