. first, are we being overly optimistic in terms of our forecast? i would say, no, because our gdp growth forecast this year at 2. 6 % is the same as the bloomberg median consensus forecast. meanwhile the ministry of finance and the nesdc3 forecasts are 2. 4 % and 2. 5 %, respectively, which is not much different. hopefully i can bring a touch of optimism to tonight's dinner. the latest indicators for q2 that have been coming out on consumption, exports and manufacturing production are pretty much along with our expectations. so, the outlook path seems to be relatively intact. second, are we keeping interest rates too high? in comparison to policy rates in the recent past, yes, our current rate is higher than what it used to be but it is not too high. if we look globally, our current policy rate at 2. 5 % is among the lowest in the world. there are only three countries that have lower policy rates – japan, switzerland and china. finally, is the bot tightening liquidity and lending standards to reduce credit growth and making it more difficult for people to access credit? i would argue that this is false. the bot does not impose lending standards on banks nor specify a minimum credit score in which banks can lend. also, the idea about tightening liquidity potentially comes from a misunderstanding about liquidity – that this is like a bucket of water, which is limited, and the bot can shrink it so there is less liquidity floating around. that is a false image to take away. if you look at private credit and bilateral repo, there is not a relationship between the two. it means that the activities that the bot doing in terms of buying and selling does not affect liquidity as private credit out there. although, we do 4 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches see that private credit is tapering off, but this is not because of something the bot does, it is because banks are slowing down their lending due to increase in credit risk. to conclude, a resilient future will not only require a robust policy mix in the short - term but also need policy measures to address longer - term structural issues. let me quickly highlight some of the bot's initiatives in this regard. first, sustainability. one big issue in thailand is that we have many brown sectors ; thus, we need to make sure that there is transition to less brown. what the bot has done is coming up with key building blocks

as good as they used to be, the answer would clearly be no. on top of that given the slow recovery in income, inflation also has resulted in higher prices and higher cost of living. third, household debt has been a big drag. high levels of household debt, at about 91 % of gdp in the first quarter of this year, has been a substantial problem that is likely to be with us for a while and not easy to be solved. the reason is that the nature of thailand's household debt is particularly problematic. the composition of household debt in thailand is different from other countries where the majority of household debt is 1 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches attributed to housing loans, underpinned by an asset. in thailand, housing loans account for only about one - third of total debt while the other two - third consists of other personal loans and other loans1. one important takeaway is that if you really want to solve the household debt problem, we need to see incomes going up. taking an example of a household in thailand's northeastern region, where household debt is an especially onerous problem for farmers, on average, there has been a steady gap between expenditures and working income2 over the past 10 years. so even if you fix the existing stock of debt, given the substantial gap between spending and income, they are going to incur new debt again. in order to address and solve the household debt problem on a sustained basis, what is required is not just measures dealing with debt, but you need to try to close that gap. this means that, firstly, we need to keep inflation low and stable because it really affects the expenditures and, secondly, we need to try to raise the level of income. if you ask whether we have done such a good job of that in the past, the short answer would be not really. i understand that there is big emphasis on trying to boost gdp growth, but gdp is not an end in itself. what we really want to see from higher economic growth is that it translates into higher welfare for households. however, if you look at the track record of the increase in economic growth or national income for the past 10 years, it has not really gone so much into labor income - national income has grown by 37 % while labor income has grown 32 %. meanwhile, the government income is laggard, having grown about 5 %, so tax revenues do not grow as rapidly as the economy does. the striking figure