CityNews – Emerging markets bubble is a label that has, in recent years, been associated with Southeast Asian economies and their tendency to favour ambitious growth strategies.
Polarity is a prolific characteristic of Thailand’s economy, and recent speculations all seem to lead to the same climax: a replica of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.
While Thailand enjoys high consumer spending, due in part to its dangerous “boosting” initiatives (such as the first-car tax rebate which led to a boom in car sales), it suffers in the form of mounting debt. In Thailand’s private sector alone, loans have rocketed by over 50% in the last 3 years, so it’s not surprising to learn that the country now has one of the highest household debt-to-GDP ratios on the whole continent. Those are not very promising statistics, and Forbes reckons that Thailand’s government will suffer grave consequences for its reckless borrowing and spending habits.
It is predicted that Thailand will crash around the same time as China, or as worldwide and local interest rates continue to inflate – which is ironically what seems to have caused Thailand’s growing bubble in the first place. Analysts say that this time might be worse than the 1997 crash, as more and more countries suffer from weaker economies, and other players like Latin America, China and Africa are involved.
You can read the Forbes article here.