recognize that this is a fairly strong medicine, so 3 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches we are looking to potentially put this measure in place at the beginning of 2025, taking into account the economic context at the time to ensure it is the right timing. in implementing financial policies, i think that what has characterized our approach all throughout is that we have been flexible, pragmatic and not too rigid. most importantly, these measures would aim to reduce the level of household debt to a more sustainable level over the long - term. to conclude, i hope that these policy measures we have undertaken, both monetary and financial policies, together with some of our long - term structural initiatives on the digital and transition finance, will help lay the foundations for a long - term sustainable recovery in thailand. thank you very much for your attention and i wish you a pleasant and productive thailand focus. 1 the mpc has raised the policy rate 7 times since aug - 22, bring it to the current level of 2. 25 % 2 low - income debtors who have been paying more interest than principal over the past five years. they will have an option to close out their debt within a reasonable time frame, five years, and at an interest rate not exceeding 15 %. 4 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches

, in significant part, to china's slowdown. total spending from tourism has also come in a bit softer due to fewer chinese tourists than expected. the drop - off in number has been compensated by non - chinese tourists, but chinese tourists tend to spend a lot more, so we see some softness in total spending. given the softness we have seen, our latest gdp forecast of 3. 6 % could be revised slightly downward. on the inflation front, the disinflation process has been faster than expected. the recent outturns in headline cpi have come in lower than our forecasts. however, this is a result of temporary factors - base effects and some government subsidies on electricity 1 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches prices. we expect inflation to gradually pick up and reside within our target range. though there is some degree of softness in the near - term, we do not see any kind of deflation risk in thailand. the softness in inflation is mostly supply - driven. we do not see broad - based weakness on the demand side or weak consumption. going forward, there are still some upside risks to inflation from effects of el nino, which could have an upward impact on prices – particularly the food component that takes up a sizable share of the cpi basket. in addition, there could be upside risks from new policy measures by the incoming government, whenever and whoever that may be. the main takeaway is that the economic picture remains intact, though there is some softness on both growth and inflation fronts. growth and inflation figures for the year will come in a bit softer than our latest forecasts of 3. 6 % and 2. 5 %, respectively. revised forecasts should come out in september along with our next monetary policy report. part 2 : our monetary policy response in august of last year, we did our first policy rate hike, raising rates from a very low point of 0. 5 %. given the economic context at the time, our policy objective was to ensure a smooth takeoff. we were trying to ensure continued economic recovery while keeping inflation expectations anchored. hence, our policy response was to undertake a'gradual and measured'interest rate normalization and we increased the policy rate by 25 bps each meeting1. no heroic 50 or 75 bps hike. the reason was that the situation in thailand was different from other countries on both the growth and inflation fronts. as i mentioned earlier, our recovery was lagging other countries. inflation was largely driven by supply side