tarisa watanagase : thailand's weathering the global downturn address by dr tarisa watanagase, governor of the bank of thailand, at a luncheon with eu ambassadors, bangkok, 3 february 2009. * * * your excellency ambassador hotek, excellencies, honourable guests, ladies and gentlemen, i am delighted to join this luncheon gathering of prominent ambassadors of the council of european union in thailand, under the presidency of ambassador ivan hotek of the czech republic. indeed, i would like to extend my sincere appreciation to ambassador hotek for his kind invitation for me to update excellencies from the eu countries on recent economic developments in thailand and the prospects for 2009. let me begin with the overview of thailand's economic performance. the thai economic performance was satisfactory for 2008 as a whole. gdp is estimated to grow by around 3. 6 percent, driven by the growth momentum during the first three quarters of the year. notably, from october 2008 onwards, economic developments have been deteriorating. during the fourth quarter of 2008, exports weakened considerably, falling by 9. 4 percent from the same quarter of the previous year. since october, exports showed large reduction in manufacturing products, especially high - technology products. on the domestic side, demand as well as consumers'and investors'confidence have deteriorated as evidenced by several indicators reported by the bank of thailand, including the business sentiment index, which fell to the lowest level at 34. 4 in november last year. in light of this, businessmen and the press started to become concerned about the potentially higher unemployment, which exacerbated confidence further. turning to economic stability, inflation pressure has dissipated starting august 2008. headline and core inflation rates, which were at 9. 2 and 3. 7 percent respectively at their peaks in july 2008, fell to 0. 4 and 1. 8 percent at the end of the year. as for the financial sector, our banking system is healthy in terms of profitability and capital base. i will return to touch on the financial sector later on. economic stability on the external front is also very strong. for 2008, the current account recorded a small deficit of 0. 2 billion us dollar. our international reserves amounted to 111 billion us dollar, which is 4 times of short - term external debt. the exchange rate remains competitive and stable. for 2008, the capital account recorded an overall surplus of 12. 8 billion us dollar, of which foreign direct investment or fdi was

income – increased by nearly 6 per cent in 2018. this was significantly faster than growth in gross household income. https : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2019 / sp - ag - 2019 - 03 - 26. html 13 / 17 3 / 26 / 2019 what's up ( and down ) with households? | speeches | rba despite the relatively weak picture for household income growth, the tax revenue collected from households has grown solidly in recent years. it's normal for growth in tax revenue to outpace income growth a bit : that is how a progressive tax system works. a useful rule of thumb is that, in the absence of adjustments to tax brackets to allow for bracket creep, for every one percentage point of growth in household income, taxes paid by households will on average increase by about 1. 4 percentage points. that's an on - average figure, though. the actual ratio can vary quite a bit. in the past year, taxes paid by households increased by around 8 per cent, more than double the rate of growth in gross household income of 3½ per cent. so the ratio is more like a bit over two - toone at the moment, rather than 1. 4 to one. that is at the high end of the range this ratio reaches, but as this graph shows, it is not unprecedented ( graph 12 ). but this effect has cumulated over time, so that the share of income that is paid in tax has been rising ( graph 12, bottom panel ). graph 12 what is noteworthy is that for all of the past six years, growth in tax paid has exceeded income growth by an above - average margin, at a time when income growth itself has been slow ( graph 13 ). https : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2019 / sp - ag - 2019 - 03 - 26. html 14 / 17 3 / 26 / 2019 what's up ( and down ) with households? | speeches | rba graph 13 there are likely to be several things going on here. aside from the usual bracket creep, some deductions and offsets have declined, boosting the overall tax take. interest rates on investment property loans are now higher than for owner - occupiers, but overall the interest rate structure on mortgages is lower than it was a few years ago. so landlords will have lower tax deductions for interest payments on loans on investment properties.