share of gdp, also accounts an even larger share of employment. tourism, both directly and indirectly, accounts around 20 percent of total employment in thailand. hence, employment and income were severely hit as a result of covid - 19, which will be another factor that will characterize both the slower and the uneven nature of the recovery going forward. while we have been hit hard, the economy has proven to be resilient. thailand is an economy where despite the big shocks from covid - 19, the downside risks to the economy remain quite limited. that is the result of our low vulnerabilities in a lot of critical areas. first, our external position : the thai economy has a very low external vulnerability. we are very resilient to the balance - of - payment - type shocks because we have a very low level of external debt and a relatively high amount of foreign reserves relative to external debt. recently, we have seen a weakening of the baht by about 10 percent year - to - date, which has outpaced other regional currencies. nonetheless, the resiliency of the thai economy and the external front remains solidly intact. the reason underpinning the weakening of the baht is due to the current account, which traditionally has been in surplus, that has swung into a deficit as a result of the contraction in tourism. meanwhile, the size of the current account deficit relative to the amount of international reserves is not worrisome. this year, on the current account side, we have observed a current account deficit of around 9 billion us dollars. on portfolio flows, we have seen outflows from the equity markets of around 3. 2 billion us dollars. at the same time, there were inflows into the bond markets of 2. 2 billion us dollars. thus, on the net of portfolio side, there were outflows of around a billion us dollars. adding together the current account deficit of 9 billion us dollars, there have been outflows of around 10 billion us dollars year - to - date. nonetheless, comparing that with our net international reserves of 280 billion us dollars, this shows that our external vulnerability is extremely low while our stability on the external front remains intact. another example of our resiliency on the external front is our low vulnerability to the possibility of another taper tantrum or a yield spike. a yield spike in the global financial markets is not likely to have a high impact on the thai economy

seen, for example, vendors using qr codes for payment purposes. i think that has been a welcomed development in trying to address our long - standing issues in trying to improve inclusion on the financial front. aside from qr codes, we have made a very good progress in terms of promptpay, which is our electronic payment system and we have seen a very high uptake in usage of promptpay, especially during the covid crisis. the number of transactions per person per year increased and reached an all - time high. we have also extended to cross - border payments. we now have in place cross - border payments using qr codes with many of our neighbors such as cambodia, vietnam, as well as japan. most recently, we have connected our payment system, promptpay, with that of singapore, paynow. this was the first global fast payment linkage and we have also seen a very satisfactory uptake on that front. another opportunity for us in this area, building upon the digital infrastructure that we put in place, is mobile banking. we have seen a very rapid rise in the usage of mobile banking applications in thailand. thai people love their mobile phones and we have seen thailand ranked number one globally in terms of usage of mobile banking applications for three years in a row. i think this is an example of opportunities that may arise and will come about as a result of putting in place the right kind of digital infrastructure to enable these things to happen. aside from the initiatives i mentioned on the digital front, another important initiative that we have been undertaking is on cbdc or central bank digital currency. we started off with the wholesale cbdc project and later undertook the cross - border cbdc pilot program with the hong kong monetary authority, which has now been extended to include the people ’ s bank of china and the uae along with the involvement of the bis. the next phase on the cbdc front is to undertake a retail cbdc pilot program. we think that this will be an important program to address our long - standing pain points in the financial sector, especially with regard to efficiency, high fees in certain areas, and more importantly, in the areas of access and inclusion. page 8 of 9 i believe our initiatives on green and digital fronts are examples of what we are doing, not only to address the immediate problems facing us in getting out of the crisis, but also to look ahead, trying to put in place and lay foundations for thailand and the financial sectors to be