On the very day that the whole world is wishing each other lots of love and eternity, the people of Thailand have also jumped into the Valentine’s Day bandwagon to enjoy the spirit of love floating in the air. Today, 30 couples have braved through the cold air of the morning on Khao Panoen Thung at Kaeng Krachan National Park in Petchaburi Province. They were there to have their marriage certificates registered on Valentine’s Day, the event that was witnessed by Petchaburi Governor Chai Panichpornpan.

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Festival of Love Celebrated throughout Thailand

A severe drought and a decline in rice prices in early 2010 do not bode well for agricultural production and consumption, although increased employment in manufacturing will partly offset the impact to agriculture.
Overall, domestic demand should provide a positive but limited contribution to growth: vulnerable households lost ground in 2009 and risks are substantial in 2010, as falling agricultural output due to the current drought may offset opportunities from the improved overall economic environment. Household consumption levels, which are highly correlated with the poverty rate, contracted in 2009 despite the rebound in the last quarter of the year, suggesting a likely increase in the poverty rate compared to 2008, especially when compounded by the loss in purchasing power from the food and fuel crisis of 2008. The outlook for 2010 is uncertain : average wages are likely to increase, thanks to the reallocation of labor from agriculture to manufacturing. Although labor markets appear very tight, with unemployment below 1 %, the data do not account for the large number of workers who moved to lower-productivity jobs in agriculture and informal services due to the crisis. Many of these workers are now returning to manufacturing, which offers higher wages than agriculture.

Alexander Wood, a founding partner of AWR Lloyd, believes the global crisis has acted as a catalyst for a fundamental, structural change in the global capital markets. The real new players in the markets are the sovereign wealth funds.
Low market valuations represent a problem on the demand side as well. Despite efforts to educate the public about the capital market, Thailand’s investor base remains small with only about 500,000 accounts in the securities sector out of a population of 67 million.
Introduction The modern Thai Capital Market traces its origins back to the early 1960s. In 1961 Thailand implemented its first five-year National Economic and Social Development Plan to support the promotion of economic growth and stability as well as to develop the Kingdom’s standard of living. Following upon this, the Second National Economic and Social Development Plan (1967-1971) then proposed for the first time that an orderly securities market be established in order to mobilize additional capital for national economic development.

The creation of Thailand’s first officially sanctioned and regulated securities market was initially proposed as part of the Second National Economic and Social Development Plan (1967-1971). In outlining its proposal for the creation of a supervised securities market, the Second National Development Plan stressed that the market’s most important role would be to mobilize funds to support Thailand’s industrialization and economic development.