As industrial and emerging countries continue to strengthen their own regulatory standards, financial market participants may relocate their operations to offshore financial centres to take advantage of relatively lax regulatory standards. It is thus important for offshore financial centres to strengthen their supervisory systems and standards. To encourage these centres to comply with international standards, various measures could be considered. For example, higher risk weights could be applied  5  BIS Review 47/1999  to counter-party transactions for banks doing business with a financial entity operating out of an offshore jurisdiction that does not comply with Basle Core Principles. Conclusion Taken together, the three approaches could result in quite an extensive overhaul of the international financial architecture and a great deal of co-ordination on the international front. This is no easy undertaking, and the nature of the problem means that the process of reform needs to be both comprehensive in market coverage and inclusive in the involvement of interested parties. Crossborder speculative attacks target the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of particular economies and thrive by exploiting the gaps and inconsistencies between jurisdictions. It is therefore essential that emerging markets, and not just the big industrialised economies, are involved in the reform process. Emerging markets have been most affected by the volatilities of the last couple of years, and their experience is crucial for the formulation of workable policies: they have a different perspective of events and different needs from those of the larger, industrialised economies.

Moreover, the dissemination of the Bank of Thailand's data to the public has been improved through the access to information through the web site and the use of the Interactive Voice Response. BIS Review 6/2001  5  The various improvements to the Bank of Thailand have also started to show results. In this regard, the Bank of Thailand was invited by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to hold shares with other prominent central banks in the world. But the work does not end here. The improvement within the Bank of Thailand must continue to ensure the Bank is an organisation which is ready to learn and develop itself as well as being the main economic organisation with accepted international working standards. More importantly, it is necessary to have an ability to maintain monetary and financial institution stability effectively and have the confidence of the public. In 2001, we projected the economy to grow at around 4 %, a similar rate compared to this year. In the first half, economic activity is projected to be somewhat stabilised. However, given a cleared economic and political environment, higher growth is anticipated in the second half of the year. Following the adoption of an accommodative monetary policy stance by the Bank of Thailand to foster economic growth, which has enabled a continued downward adjustment of market interest rates, domestic spending is expected to pick up next year, as there is usually a lag of 1 – 1.5 years before monetary policy will result in increased spending.