Bangkok –Somwalee Limrachtamorn, the managing director of Nielsen (Thailand), the leading provider of marketing information and consumer-related measurement, has disclosed that the state welfare card scheme, which offers each card holder 200-300 baht a month to buy consumer products and spend on travel expenses, improved the overall growth of consumer spending in last year’s fourth quarter by 3.6 percent, higher than the previous three quarters, she said.
She added that the welfare card scheme has boosted the business turnover of local mom and pop stores which had grown by 3.5 percent on average in the fourth quarter.
Spending on consumer goods is forecast to grow by 3-4 percent in 2019, but that number is considerably low in comparison to the numbers in the past 10 years.
