Economists: Relieving political tension will boost Thai economy in 2014

BANGKOK, December 3 (TNA) - The Center of Economic and Business Forecasting, under Bangkok-based University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, says if Thailand's political tension relieves, the Thai economy will likely grow by 4.5-5% next year as earlier forecast. The center's director, Thanavath Phonvichai, made the assessment on Tuesday, acknowledging that his center will issue a new economic forecast on December 12. Thanavath noted that the latest survey, however, found Thailand's Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) stood at 75.0 points in November 2013, a drop from 76.6 points a month earlier, its decline of the eighth consecutive month and its new low in 22 months after February last year, due to consumers' concerns over the slow national economic recovery, high costs of living, domestic political uncertainty and remaining high vulnerability of the world economy. Meanwhile, Praipol Khumsap, an economics lecturer at Thammasat University, projected that domestic political problems would continue, no matter whether demonstrations ended or not. Praipol foresaw the prime minister's resignation or a House dissolution would not end domestic political problems and their impacts on the Thai economy would continue until next year. The senior economist predicted that Thailand's economic growth rate would not reach 4 per cent next year, as earlier forecast, and the Thai economic growth rate should be lower than 3 per cent this year. Earlier in the day, the Ministry of Finance's Fiscal Policy Office (FPO) also assessed that the Thai economy should grow by less than 3 per cent this year due to domestic political woes.(TNA)