The finance minister insists the government will proceed with making the cost of living relief package permanent, saying it has the duty to patch up social inqualities. Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said the measure with the highest possibility to be permanent is the free third-class train ride as most passengers are low-income people, while the State Railway of Thailand has a fixed cost in this segment of service.

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Govt to Make Public Saving Measures Permanent

The output of other sectors was also affected during the recent crisis, although less markedly because they had been growing slower than the sectors linked to external demand.
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.

In Vietnam, households use to held their savings in cash or real estate. With the opening of the stock market, you have seen a tremendous shift of funds into the capital market.
‘‘Institutional investors want to have the ability to get in or out of a stock without significantly influencing the share price.

Despite the failure of the BSE, the concept of an orderly, officially supported securities market in Thailand had by then attracted considerable attention. In this regard, the Second National Economic and Social Development Plan (1967-1971) proposed, for the first time,
a plan for the establishment of such a market, with appropriate facilities and procedures for securities trading.

In 1969, as recommended by the World Bank, the government acquired the services of Professor Sidney M. Robbins from Columbia University to study the development channels of the Thai capital market. Professor Robbins had previously served as Chief Economist at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The same year proved an eventful one for the Thai capital market, as the Bank of Thailand also formed a Working Group on Capital Market Development, which was assigned the task of establishing the stock market. A year later, in 1970, Professor Robbins produced a comprehensive report entitled “A Capital Market in Thailand”. This report became the master plan for the future development of the Thai capital market.