Thailand plans to lift economic growth to 3 per cent within three years by channeling foreign investment into data centres, semiconductors and electric vehicle manufacturing.
The target comes after Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy grew at an annual average of just 2.34 per cent over the past five years, trailing the faster recoveries posted by regional neighbours.
Thai Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas outlined the investment-led strategy ahead of Bangkok hosting the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank next week. The government is directing capital incentives toward energy-heavy high-tech sectors while investing in renewable power to support incoming factories and server farms.
Capital spending across the country has never fully regained the share of economic output it held before the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when Bangkok devalued the baht and sought an IMF bailout.
“After the financial crisis, our investment-to-GDP has declined to around 22% to 23% at the moment. So that’s why our growth momentum has been so slow,” Ekniti said in an interview.
Rebuilding that baseline forms the core of the current ministerial agenda, but the fiscal room for state stimulus remains constrained. Thailand’s public debt-to-GDP ratio is approaching the official statutory cap of 70 per cent, limiting direct government spending programmes.
7 per cent. The central bank projects that reaching even that lower expansion rate will take at least four years of structural adjustment.
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