This, together with the increase in the minimum wage in April, will support the rural economy and the well-being of the lower-income group. Third, the multiplier effects should improve on the back of increasing public and private investment. While some of the government infrastructure projects were deferred from last year partly due to the new government procurement system. This year progress should have a better outlook since many projects have gone through the bidding and procurement processes, with material progress underway. These projects include, among others, 4 of the 5 dual-track railway projects that would greatly improve upon the logistics network between major cities and industrial estates in central and northeastern Thailand. We can expect to see these dual-track railways up and running from 2019 and 2020 onwards. Our Mass Transit System is also being upgraded with 3 new metro lines in Bangkok that will extend from key stations in the cities to residential areas in outer Bangkok. Two of these projects, particularly the Green and Orange lines, are under construction and should be completed by 2021 and 2023, respectively. Other infrastructure projects in construction include the Bangkok-Korat high speed train and the expansion of the Suvarnabhumi Airport which are also expected to be completed in a few years. On the private side, private investment is expected to gain further momentum as evidenced by growing imports of capital goods as well as investment spending in machinery and equipment. This is in line with private credit growth which has picked up since the beginning of 2017.

In light of Switzerland’s large current account surplus (50 billion CHF or 12% of GDP in 2002), you have been additionally challenged by a real exchange rate which, over the last ten years, has on average appreciated by 0.6%.8 For the most part, the Swiss export sector has risen to that challenge. By contrast, the domestically oriented sectors of the Swiss economy have to a large extent remained sheltered from the competitive forces of an increasingly open global economy by an intricate web of regulatory measures which have prevented the product market from functioning according to market principles. Examples are numerous: The electricity market remains regionally monopolized. As a result, Swiss enterprises must bear higher electricity costs than their international competitors. In the telecommunication market, the achieved results in the deregulated part of the sector have not been matched on the still monopolized last mile. In the pharmaceutical and in the automotive sectors, parallel imports are still impeded by patent law or tacit collusion rendered possible by weak international cartel laws. The detrimental effects of this economic bifurcation are clearly reflected in Switzerland’s economic statistics. As one would suspect, prices in the domestic sector are being kept artificially high, thus undermining competitiveness. An analysis of longer-term price series demonstrates the diverging path of prices between the export- and the domestic-oriented sectors of the economy. The export price deflator rose much less than did the GDP deflator. (see annex for graph 2) A similar picture emerges on the productivity side.