BANGKOK, 10 June 2012 – Academics have been worried that the Euro financial crisis may hurt Thai exports considerably.
Director of the International Trade Center of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC) Att Pisarnvanich said that the center has estimated that the economic problems in European Union (EU) will likely lead to the global economic slowdown, which will cause Thailand to miss its 2012 export growth target of 15 percent.
The center has presented 2 scenarios under the assumption that the EU crisis persists. In the first scenario, Thailand will be able to find new markets to make up for lost trade in Europe and eventually manage to push the export growth rate to 10-12 percent.
Mr. Att said that, under the second scenario, the EU economy suffers a minus growth, the situation that leads Thai exports to grow between 8 and 9 percent.
He stated that Thai exports to EU are currently worth 700 billion baht and represented 10 percent of the country’s total export value of 7 trillion baht.
Mr. Att went on to say that if Spain and Italy, whose imports from Thailand are equivalent to 13 percent of Thai-EU trade, suffer similar problems like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, Thai exports to this major economic bloc will plunge around 100 billion baht and push GDP down by 0.5 percent.
