sethaput suthiwartnarueput : laying the foundations for a sustainable recovery keynote address by dr sethaput suthiwartnarueput, governor of the bank of thailand, at the stock exchange of thailand : thailand focus 2023 " the new horizon ", bangkok, 23 august 2023. * * * distinguished guests, first, let me thank the stock exchange of thailand for inviting me to give a talk at the thailand focus this year. today, i will share with you my thoughts about the economic outlook, along with some observations about the bank of thailand ( bot )'s policy responses, focusing on monetary policy and financial policies in relation to household debt. part 1 : economic outlook before i go on in terms of economic outlook, it will be useful to do a look back and think about where things were a year ago, when i last spoke in august last year. things were quite different then. recovery in thailand was slow and lagged the region, partly due to our economy's heavy reliance on tourism. we closed out last year with about 11 million tourists, down from the 40 million prior to covid, and a fairly slow recovery in terms of the overall economic picture. consumption was recovering steadily from a low base. at the end of 2022, gdp growth came out at 2. 6 %. what was probably top of mind for us then was inflation, which was rising very rapidly as it was all around the world. headline cpi peaked in august 2022 at 7. 9 %, and eventually the outturn for the entire year turned in at 6. 1 %. core inflation peaked in december 2022 at about 3. 2 %. so that was the picture last year. fast forward to today, where are we now? things are on a much firmer ground. recovery is intact. gdp is finally back to pre - covid level in the first quarter of this year. consumption has been growing steadily, at above 6 % last year and above 5 % in first quarter of this year. tourism, which is a key determinant of the overall stage of economic recovery, has been recovering very steadily. year - todate, as of july, we had about 15 million tourists. we still maintain our year - end forecast for tourists of about 29 million, so we are getting closer to the pre - covid level. but the picture is not all wine and roses. there are some soft spots. exports have come in weaker than expected due

mechanism to protect banks'information assets including hardware, software and data. as we all know, after 9 / 11, this issue has become a global concern. most financial institutions are aware of the need to have business continuity management. the business continuity plan has to be established on an enterprise - wide basis with a thorough business impact analysis and risk assessment. it is more than just the recovery of technology ; it is the recovery and continuity of business. with the widespread use of it, it is important that the legal framework is in line with the new environment. thailand has started to legislate five new information and communication technology ( ict ) laws to embrace information technology since 1998. they are the electronic transactions law, computer crime law, data protection law, electronic funds transfer law, and the national information infrastructure law. the cabinet has appointed the national electronics and computer technology center ( nectec ) to take charge of the drafting of these laws. the electronic transactions law was promulgated on april 3, 2002 while the others arc in the process of enactment. 2. e - banking products in thailand and supervisory concerns what i would like to do next is to give you some examples of it - related financial products and services currently offered in thailand and the pertinent risk issues that bring up supervisory concerns. let me start by briefly showing you our data on e - banking service usage by category. in the first four rows of the table, the figures show customers'e - banking transactions that have high transaction volumes but low average values. in the remaining rows, you will find that the bank of thailand is the sole service provider facilitating wholesale payment transactions between financial institutions and the central bank. even the number of transaction is much smaller, the value is certainly much higher. this type of transaction of course has different risk implications from that with higher transaction volume in smaller amount of money. internet banking in thailand can be classified into two categories, informational and transactional websites. the informational website provides banking information including products, services, interest rate, foreign exchange rate, etc. on the other hand, the transactional website is a channel for customer transactions such as money transfers and bill payments as well as inquiries such as balance inquiries and statement download. since internet is ubiquitous and global in nature, it is an open network accessible from unknown sources. messages are routed through unknown locations. therefore, internet significantly magnifies the importance of security control and protection against fraud, hacking and other possible internet security threats. a financial institution