Bangkok April 2020

BANK OF THAILAND
EXPECTED TO CUT
RATES AGAIN
Following a cut in interest rates by 0.25 per
cent to an all time low of 1 percent, the Bank of
Thailand is widely expected to cut rates again
to even lower levels.
This follows an emergency cut in the U.S of
0.5 percent on an intermeeting basis as well as
strong expectations of more interest rates cuts
to come from the U.S. Federal reserve in near
term scheduled meetings.
As such, the Bank of Thailand is likely to
cut again possibly twice in the coming month
as the Kingdom’s economic growth rate is
expected to slow to just 0.5 per cent year on
year, according to some leading economists at
Kasikorn bank.
Yet interest rate cuts, whether here or in the
U.S. are not necessarily the panacea they may
be commonly expected to be. When rates are
high, interest rate cuts can have a real effect,
but with interest rates already at decades’ low
levels there is little more in the way of stimulus
that they can provide. It will be just another excuse
to prop up overvalued stock markets with
such actions likely to be futile in any case. The
next step is for central banks to directly buy
stocks in the stock market to further artificially
inflate prices, a dangerous precedent.
In Thailand, the most important thing will be
for credit card and loan issuers to cut rates to
their borrowers, and to increase lending dramatically
to improve consumer confidence and
spur spending behavior.
BUSINESS SUPPLEMENT
THAILAND BUSINESS NEWS
GOVERNMENT’S
B 100BN STIMULUS TO
GO AHEAD
Approval has been given by the government
for a 100 billion baht economic stimulus
package to be releasedin order to kick-start the
economy. The measures will include financial
support for small business, tax incentives and
tax cuts as well as other financial aid targeting
specific parts of the economy as may be necessary.
Measures that may be rolled out are payment
holidays for principal amounts, new soft
loans from the Government savings bank, cash
giveaways to hardest hit families, speeding up
VAT refunds, and other tax relief packages for
SME’s.
Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak
was quoted as saying, ”It is particularly important
to help SMEs to prevent further impacts on
workers. This is the first set of measures, and
there will be more later.”
WINDSOR SUITES
HOTEL TO START
RENOVATIONS EARLY
The well-known Windsor Suites Hotel in
Bangkok’s Sukhumvit soi 20 will close for renovations
on 30th April and will re-open at the
end of the year.
A fall in occupancy to just 30 per cent due
to an absence of Chinese and South Korean
visitors has hastened the decision, and the
renovations will take place earlier than previously
planned. The amount being invested will
be 400 to 500 million baht.
Sukhumvit Road has seen a major change
to its skyline in the last 10 years or so with
many internationally recognized branded hotels
opening up recently. Amongst them are
the Sofitel and the Holiday Inn. More hotels are
expected to come online in the next few years.
The Windsor Suites Hotel’s chief executive,
Bundit Bosereewong, was quoted as saying,
“We have to shift the strategy and let an international
brand tune in because the competition
in the Sukhumvit area is more intense as new
supply is added every year.”
www.thailand-business-supplement.com
While bar charts, line graphs
and simple numbers are hardly
capable of providing the defining
answer to many economic, social
and political questions, they are
certainly a good way of obtaining
a general overview of any particular
subject.
Each month the Business Supplement
will look into a brace of
statistical information and provide
readers with what we consider to
be the central elements of these
figures.
THE WORLD’S
MILLIONAIRES
JUST STATISTICS
Much of the wealth can be found
in high property prices across the
said countries and possibly well
inflated stock holdings. The rest of
the top 10 countries all fall in those
categories with France, Italy, Canada,
Australia and Spain ranking 6th
to 10th in that order.
Asia’s other millionaires were
mainly concentrated in Korea, Tai-
HIGHEST VALUE
“UNICORN”
START-UPS IN 2019
2019 saw plenty of startup companies
emerging from venture capitalists
and hitting the stock market,
or even remaining in private hands
awaiting a possible IPO at the right
time.
worth some US$15 Billion.
Grab came in at US$14.3 billion,
even though there was competition
from Uber, which itself is a prior unicorn,
and now listed on the stock
market.
Millionaires, that is, those with a
net worth of more than US$1million,
can be found all across the globe,
but most are in the United States.
The U.S. is home to 18.61 million
millionaires, (that’s over 5 per cent
of the population).
China follows in second place
with 4.44 million, less than half of
one percent of the country’s population.
Japan, The UK and Germany
follow in third, fourth and fifth positions
with 3.02 million, 2.44 million,
and 2.18 million millionaires respectively.
wan, Singapore and Hong Kong,
with India also high on the list.
In total, worldwide there are 46.6
million millionaires and 168,030 are
of them are considered to be ultra
rich with a net worth of over US$50
million. Fully half of these ultra rich
individuals are to be found in the
USA.
Those that are valued above
US$1 billion are referred to as “Unicorns”,
and there were more than
400 of them last year.
23 of those were valued at above
the US$10 billion mark, amongst
them famous names such as AirBNB
worth US$35 Billion, SpaceX worth
US$33 Billion and Drone maker DJI
Chinese internet giant, Bytedance
(Tiktok), is the largest start up
of the year worth some US$75 billion,
and an IPO is expected to take
place when conditions are right.
In the end, for all unicorns, the
stock market will ultimately decide
on their final valuations, but most
startups have managed to largely
maintain their initial stock prices after
coming to the market.
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