It’s Not Just India Or Countries In Europe Facing Slow Growth, Thailand’s Struggling Too

Global economic slowdown: three separate, individual, and independent words that when used together combine to make a lot of sense and heck, should it also be said, send shivers down many an economy’s spine?

We saw the worst of it in 2008. And now, there seem to be new threats that are forever threatening to push the world toward another state of recession, the last thing that anybody needs.

The economies- at a global scale- are showing signs of acute weakness and the next stage could be a worldwide recession, if Morgan Stanley is to be believed, in about nine months from now.

But, hang on.

For the longest time did one think that (it was only the most robust and swiftly growing economies such as) India or the developed economies such as the United States were facing their own share of problems.

In fact, popular wisdom pointed to the direction of even the perpetually strong economies such as the ones in Europe- including Germany and France- suffering from economic duress, as part of a global slowdown that’s struck nearly every imagined sector.

But facts also point toward assimilating a sense of pragmatism in handing verdict regarding who is crumbling under the economic slowdown. And it appears that Thailand’s economy, too, is facing its share of concerns.

According to recent economic updates and breaking news coverages, Thailand’s economy has been growing at the slowest pace possible since the year 2014.

This fundamentally means that the growth of Thailand’s economy has been the slowest in a little over last half a decade.

It appears that the ongoing rift between the US and China, which has directly resulted in constricted trade relations between the two nations has gone on to impact Thailand’s exports as well. Marketwatch didn’t really suggest anything blossoming where Thailand’s economy was concerned and happened to share:

Gross domestic product expanded 2.3% in the second quarter from a year earlier, slowing from the 2.8% growth in the previous quarter, the National Economic and Social Development Board, the government’s economic-planning arm, stated Monday. The growth matched the median 2.3% forecast of nine economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

The global growth opportunities for Thailand’s economy are being kept under check by the ongoing rift between the US and China. While Tourism is the only real contributor to the country’s GDP- as is often the case with the Buddhist land- a weak global demand isn’t shaping well for the country.

That said, one wonders, what do the forecasts for the year 2019 look like? Well, here’s what you ought to know:

For 2019, the government body now expects the economy to grow 2.7%-3.2% from 3.3%-3.8% projected earlier. It expects exports to fall by 1.2% on year in 2019. On a quarterly basis, the Thai economy was only able to grow by 0.6% while the economists had predicted a growth rate of around 0.7%.

One can only hope for a swift end to the ongoing trade conflict between the US- arguably, the strongest economy in the world- and the autocratic, regimental government of China as the direct relation of this consternation is weighing down heavily on the economies such as Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and the others.