The Export-Import Bank of Thailand (EXIM Thailand) forecasts Thai export growth as high as 4 per cent in 2021, as global trade and economy recovers from a low base of -10 per cent. However, export growth may not return to 2019 levels due to ongoing Covid-19 restrictions around the world, cautioned the bank’s president Pisit Serewiwattana.
The International Monetary Fund projects that less than one-third (60) of 195 economies around the globe will record 2021 GDP higher than or equal to that in 2019. Of those fast-recovering economies, nine are among Thailand’s top 20 export markets – China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, South Korea and Taiwan. Major Thai exports to these markets include industrial products like plastic resin, refined oil, chemicals, cosmetics, soap and skincare products, and agricultural goods such as fresh fruits, rubber, sugar, tapioca products and beverages.
Pisit said the key factor propelling the Thai economy and exports in 2021 would be the ability of local businesses to adapt to the new, post-Covid operating conditions. These would be characterised by improving domestic and tourism demand driven by government stimulus.
The latest Thai export figures, for September, show a 3.9 per cent contraction – the lowest in five months. Thai exports in the first nine months of 2020 contracted by 7.3 per cent, lower than those of several peer countries including Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India.
Pisit predicted that Joe Biden’s election as US president would see an easing of the US-China trade war, promotion of clean energy, hikes for corporate and personal income tax, and a rise in the minimum wage. This should encourage more relocation of investment bases from the US.
EXIM Thailand is now aiming to become a “sustainable bank”, with a focus on responsible financial and business management, social and environmental risk management, organisation-wide risk management, and good governance for sustainable banking development. The bank is tasked with supporting exports and investment, particularly in new frontiers, to get Thailand out of the middle-income trap. It is also mandated to boost SMEs’ access to financing and knowledge via the bank’s EXIM Excellence Academy (EXAC). Recently, the bank developed the Thailand Export Readiness Assessment & Knowledge Management (TERAK) system to assess, analyse, process and prepare reports and offer support services to entrepreneurs. It also supports environmentally friendly and renewable energy projects for balanced and sustainable development. In the long term, the bank aims to help Thai entrepreneurs develop higher value-added and innovative products and adapt to the rapidly changing business environment, so that businesses can grow firmly and sustainably with long-term competitive advantages in the global market.
The need for remote work arrived quickly when Covid-19 triggered work-from-home orders virtually overnight.
The world has never experienced such a large-scale resourcing challenge.
The Covid-19 crisis forced many companies to review their business continuity plans and scramble to find ways to deploy and manage resources differently in light of government travel restrictions.
With the crisis ongoing, companies continue to seek ways of making their resource deployment more flexible to support operations with the least disruption possible.
Some companies were able to continue with minimal disruption thanks to the nature of their business and the technology they adopted.
But for many others, challenges in resource planning are unlikely to go away quickly. “New normal” resourcing planning will be part of their strategy for the foreseeable future.
Outside Thailand, many countries were experiencing demand for remote working options before the pandemic. Technology that enabled virtual connections and meetings meant geographical location was often less of an issue when it came to acquiring talent.
This trend in workforce planning and talent acquisition will most likely grow as technology rapidly improves and enables companies to become more connected and agile. New-generation workers are also more technologically savvy and require more balance and flexibility in their work locations.
The landscape is changing quickly under pressure from government regulations and restrictions in reaction to the pandemic. We are seeing remote work evolving into various scenarios, from virtual assignments and international remote work to domestic remote work, work from home and other similar arrangements. And these are still evolving as the world and companies continue to understand the impact of Covid-19 and what this means for their present and future planning.
Each company has different features, considerations, challenges and possible remote-working solutions to choose from.
A variety of stakeholders within the company will need to align and agree on shared goals to ensure that successful remote working can be achieved. For example, implementation of remote work can have an impact on various functions of the company – including global mobility, human resources, talent, immigration, corporate tax, finance, and operations, to name a few.
At the same time, remote work can trigger unintended legal/regulatory issues concerning corporate tax, permanent establishment, withholding tax, individual double tax, social security and employment.
Thailand, for example, has various laws and regulations surrounding immigration and work requirements as well as corporate and individual income tax obligations if working in Thailand or performing work for Thailand.
To legally work in Thailand, a foreigner needs to have the right visa and work permit. The concept of “work” is broadly defined under Thai regulations and often includes working on the computer at home or at a remote location without having to be a workplace or client site.
Under the Foreigner’s Working Management Emergency Decree BE2560 (2017) and Amendment BE2561 (2018) (“Foreign Working Law”) “work” is defined as engaging in an occupation regardless of whether or not there is an employer or wages or other form of compensation.
Therefore, to legally work remotely in Thailand, a foreigner is normally required to have a work permit. This may create challenges and issues for the individual and employer since generally a work permit application must be sponsored by a Thai entity.
The risk of working remotely without the right documents typically increases over time and can also trigger other employer issues such as corporate tax, permanent establishment issues and possibly violation of the Foreign Business Act (“FBA”) if the proper foreign business licence or certificate is not obtained.
The complex laws and regulations around mobile employees are not unique to Thailand. In Southeast Asia and beyond, each country has laws governing how foreign work is defined and regulated as well as having its own laws governing individual and foreign company regulations and tax obligations.
Meanwhile in many countries there is increasing connectedness between agencies such as tax and immigration. Information sharing between countries is also increasing quickly.
The risks of not complying with country regulations can vary from financial penalties, detention, deportation or other sanctions for both the individual and companies, not to mention reputational risk.
In Southeast Asia, some countries have very active monitoring processes as well as stiff financial and operational penalties for non-compliance. With the advent of Covid-19, many national regulatory agencies have issued new rules to keep up with these changes, and this is expected to continue as the situation unfolds.
It is more important than ever for employers to be on top of these changes and plan carefully with each of their relevant stakeholders to see how this will impact their current and future workforce and to minimise any risk and disruption to their operations.
Mark Kuratana is Global Employer Services leader for Thailand, Myanmar and Laos at
Gross Domestic Product in Q3/2020 decreased by 6.4%, recovering from a fall of 12.1% in Q2/2020, as a result of improvements in total exports of goods and services, private investment, and private final consumption expenditure. Meanwhile, government final consumption expenditure, and public investment both expanded continually, the National Economic and Social Development Council, the state-own think-tank said on Monday.
In terms of production, agricultural production fell by 0.9%, due mainly to the decline in main crops included paddy, rubber, and oil palms. The non-agricultural sector declined by 6.8%, improving from a fall of 12.9% in Q2/2020 as the government has eased the measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19. Furthermore, the economic stimulus measures also supported the recovery of manufacturing and service sectors, which fell by 5.3% and 7.3%, improving from falls of 14.6% and 12.2% in Q2/2020, respectively. The recovered service sector included wholesale and retail trade, accommodation and food service activities, and transportation and storage. Moreover, construction and information and communication expanded continually, the NESDC said.
In terms of expenditure, private final consumption expenditure fell by 0.6%. Moreover, gross fixed capital formation, and exports and imports of goods and services contracted by 2.4%, 23.5%, and 20.3%, respectively. However, government final consumption expenditure expanded by 3.4%. After seasonal adjustment, the Thai economy in Q3/2020 expanded by 6.5% (QoQ SA).
Private final consumption expenditure fell by 0.6%, recovering from a fall of 6.8% in Q2/2020. Non-durable and service items expanded by 2.7%, and 3.8%, respectively. However, durable and semi-durable items decreased by 19.3%, and 14.0%, respectively.
General government final consumption expenditure increased by 3.4%, continued to expand from a rise of 1.3% in Q2/2020. The expansion was mainly attributed to compensation of employees, with a 1.6% rise. Moreover, purchases of goods and services grew by 7.8%. In addition, social transfer in kind also expanded by 8.0%.
Gross fixed capital formation fell by 2.4%, compared to a fall of 8.0% in Q2/2020. Private investment decreased by 10.7%, compared to a 15.0% reduction in Q2/2020. Machinery items was a major contributing factor, with a reduction of 14.0%. Meanwhile, construction expanded slightly by 0.3%. Public investment significantly expanded by 18.5%, increasing from a rise of 12.5% in Q2/2020. The expansion was resulted from an 18.4% expansion in public machinery items as well as an 18.6% increase in public construction, driven mainly by the government construction.
Changes in inventories at current market prices in Q3/2020 decreased to the value of 120.6 billion baht. Reduction in stocks came mainly from rice, sugar, motor vehicles, preparation and spinning of textile fibers, and gold. Accumulation in stocks, meanwhile, included rubber, paddy, jewelry and related articles, computers and peripheral equipment, and refined petroleum products.
Goods and services balance at current market prices recorded a surplus of 257.2 billion baht, comprising a surplus of 397.5 billion baht in trade balance and a deficit of 140.3 billion baht in service balance.
The Office of Transport and Public Policy and Planning has hired Infra Plus Consulting for Bt22 million to conduct a study on its plan to build an efficient transport link between the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and the South through Ranong province.
The move is part of the government’s plan to create a transport link between EEC, covering the provinces of Rayong, Chonbur and Chachoengsao, and other parts of the country.
The study should be completed by July next year, the office’s deputy director general Wilairat Sirisoponsilp said.
The plan focuses on upgrading the deep sea port in Ranong and turning it into a trading gateway for the Andaman Sea to accommodate the transfer of goods from EEC to countries that are members of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) as well as to Europe, Middle-East and Africa.
BIMSTEC comprises Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.
NESDC to tap Bt100 billion for funding labour training
EconNov 16. 2020Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow
By The Nation
The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) would propose new projects worth Bt100 billion to the Cabinet related to labour skills training and for investments in projects in the communities, council secretary-general Danucha Pichayanan said.
The projects would be funded from the Bt400-billion budget, which is part of the proposed Bt1-trillion borrowing to fund Covid-19 stimulus programmes, added Danucha, who is secreary of the state committee tasked with screening budget requests under the borrowing plan.
The Bt100-billion spending is also in line with Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow’s policy to invest Bt400 billion focused on labour upskilling and reskilling.
Meanwhile, Supattanapong has instructed the Eastern Economic Corridor Office and the Board of Investment to seek ways to lure more foreign investment into Thailand.
Earlier, EEC Office secretary-general Kanit Sangsubhan said that the EEC office would adjust its five-year investment plan to adapt to the changing global situation.
The 2020-24 plan for infrastructure and targeted industries would be revised in light of US president-elect Joe Biden’s strategy to promote eco-friendly businesses.
Kanit said the EEC would focus more on trade and investment collaboration with the US, as well as woo foreign investment in new technologies such as 5G wireless broadband.
By The Washington Post · David J. Lynch · NATIONAL, BUSINESS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS The uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak is prompting government officials across the nation to impose new restrictions on consumers and businesses, sapping the economy’s momentum and delaying the recovery of millions of jobs lost during the recession.
Washington’s failure to provide additional financial support is compounding the economic distress. Though Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell this week repeated his call for a fresh round of pump-priming, the economy for now is left to navigate a winter of disease and loss unaided.
On Friday, Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam tightened limits on restaurants and indoor gatherings, effective at 12:01 a.m. Monday, while the governors of California, Oregon and Washington state issued a joint statement discouraging travel and advising visitors to quarantine upon arrival for 14 days. The mayor of New York City, meanwhile, warned parents that public schools could close as soon as Monday.
Similar measures are taking effect or under consideration elsewhere, including Chicago, where the mayor on Thursday issued a stay-at-home advisory just hours before Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker threatened a mandatory statewide order. The renewed clampdown is reminiscent of the worst days of the pandemic in early March when sports leagues, movie theaters and restaurants abruptly went into hibernation in hopes of curbing the contagion.
Those steps were only partly successful and came at great cost. By the end of June, the economy had shrunk by $2.2 trillion – more than Italy’s entire annual output. Now as communities around the country inch toward new shutdowns, the economy is again at risk. Consumers are growing more pessimistic about the future, according to the latest University of Michigan confidence gauge. And even before new restrictions were announced, they had begun cutting back on spending.
“We see stronger growth in 2021. But we need a bridge to get there,” said economist Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics. “The outlook is honestly quite dark.”
The backsliding comes after a stronger-than-expected rebound from this spring’s abrupt recession. A bit more than half of the 22 million Americans who lost their jobs when nonessential businesses closed have returned to work, and today’s 6.9% unemployment rate is well below the double-digit figures that most Wall Street economists originally had forecast. Output expanded in the third quarter at a record rate.
Yet with more than 11 million still jobless, the United States is in danger of squandering the hard-won progress it has made in rebuilding the economy. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the rampaging virus represented “an emergency of the highest magnitude.” But she and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have held no talks on a new rescue package.
In El Paso, local officials have deployed 10 mobile morgue trailers to handle a backlog of corpses. The county’s top elected official this week extended a shutdown of nonessential businesses until Dec. 1, ordering residents to stay home and avoid travel.
The pandemic has driven roughly 300 companies out of business in the border community, according to David Jerome, the president of the local chamber of commerce. An additional 300 companies – restaurants, hair salons and retail shops – have only enough cash on hand to survive for less than a month.
“We’re hitting a bit of a tipping point,” Jerome said. “People are getting to the point where they’re pretty stretched. People are vulnerable.”
Eight months into a historic crisis, the United States appears to be suspended in a sort of economic purgatory. The labor market is slowly healing, with initial unemployment claims falling for four straight weeks. But the virus outlook is grim and getting grimmer.
On Thursday, the United States for the first time reported more than 150,000 cases in a single day. Within the next week, the daily total will top 200,000 and is likely to reach 300,000 by early December, according to Ian Shepherdson, chief economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics.
By mid-December, hospitals will be swamped with twice as many coronavirus patients as during the pandemic’s earlier waves “unless most large-population states impose much more severe restrictions on the leisure and hospitality sectors, and on indoor gatherings, very soon,” he wrote in a note to clients Friday.
Consumers already have begun retrenching. Spending by 30 million Chase credit and debit cardholders through Nov. 9 was 7.4 percent below last year’s level and had “fallen notably” over the past two weeks, according to economist Jesse Edgerton of JPMorgan Chase.
Investors are profiting despite the worsening health situation. On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose nearly 400 points and is up more than 11 percent this month. Yet, millions of American households are suffering a silent financial squeeze.
Between the end of September and the end of October, the number of Americans saying it was “very difficult” to pay their usual household expenses rose by more than 2.3 million to 34.8 million, according to the Census Bureau’s pulse survey.
In Los Angeles, Micah Martin, 57, has been struggling to survive since losing his job as a health-care training consultant. He finally received unemployment benefits this summer just as he was preparing to move back to his parents’ home in Oklahoma.
“Since then, it’s been living off fumes,” he said. “I’m aggravated that Nancy Pelosi and McConnell haven’t come up with a compromise. It’s really put a hardship on me and a lot of other people.”
Los Angeles County health officials warned on Friday that tighter activity limits may be imminent if a recent surge in coronavirus cases isn’t contained. The county already is operating under the most restrictive conditions in California’s four-tiered system.
“Covid seems to be out of control here,” Martin said. “I haven’t been to a restaurant since February.”
There are reasons to hope the economy will fare better in the next few months than it did during the pandemic’s first wave. Doctors have more experience treating covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. More Americans are wearing masks and practicing social distancing. And a highly effective vaccine could be widely available by April, according to Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease specialist.
“The American people’s reaction to the surge will be significantly different from what it was in the spring,” said Michael Strain, an economist with the American Enterprise Institute. “The risk of dying has gone down considerably relative to the spring. People may be willing to take more risks.”
That seems to be true in the resort town of Branson, Mo. Gail Myer, vice president of family-owned Myer Hotels, said the company has kept employees and guests safe through mask-wearing, social distancing and enhanced sanitizing and hygiene.
Though business is down significantly, and he has reduced his workforce by one-third, Myer said October was the company’s best month this year. November could be even better.
“People are tired of not being able to do things they consider normal, and they are also figuring out how to travel comfortably,” Myer said. “I think the economy in the U.S. is getting better and people are figuring out how to make it work for them.”
But the $3 trillion in federal support that cushioned the blow to the economy in the spring is now absent. The resurgent virus may depress activity no matter what government officials do.
“More businesses will be at risk of permanently going out of business, which would dampen labor demand and potentially spur new rounds of layoffs. This suggests the labor market recovery could meaningfully slow or even reverse in coming months as the country tries to get the virus under control,” economists at Bank of America said Friday.
In Chicago, restaurateur Kevin Boehm, 50, closed two of his 20 restaurants and laid off 1,800 of his roughly 2,000 employees in the spring. With the virus spreading uncontrollably, city officials on Oct. 30 reimposed a ban on indoor dining just one month after they had relaxed restaurant capacity limits.
Over a 27-year career, Boehm has had an oven explode in his face and seen a restaurant burn down. But with revenue off by 80 percent, the pandemic has pushed him and his partner in the Boka Group to the brink.
Now, as Boehm contemplates multimillion-dollar financial losses and the prospect of additional layoffs, he is looking to Washington.
“We need Republicans and Democrats to step up and give us the help we need,” he said. “You can only take so many punches.”
The House last month passed legislation to provide $120 billion in grants to independent restaurants amid warnings that 85% of them could fail without assistance. But the Senate has yet to act on the measure.
Ryan Rivett, chief executive of My Place Hotels of America, is also counting on new stimulus legislation. His extended-stay hotel chain remained open throughout the pandemic with managers of some properties sleeping on site to compensate for reduced staffing.
Rivett received a forgivable government loan earlier this year, which was intended to prevent layoffs. But while he can adjust his labor costs as demand fluctuates, his loan payments are less flexible.
“The absence of stimulus is our bigger worry,” he said. “I don’t want to lose our business because we can’t service our debt.
The economic outlook is clouded by the limited nature of some new restrictions. As the escalating health emergency threatens to overwhelm hospital systems, restrictions are spreading to politically conservative states, such as West Virginia, Iowa and Wyoming, that had resisted such measures during earlier phases of the pandemic.
But such efforts remain controversial. In El Paso, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is challenging County Judge Ricardo Samaniego’s shutdown order.
In New Germany, Minn., Jean Stelten-Beuning, owner of Top Dog Country Club, an upscale dog-boarding facility, is worried about the next few months.
Last year, at her 35-acre site, complete with a heated canine swimming pool, she boarded 105 dogs over Thanksgiving weekend. Now as officials urge caution about traveling for the holiday, she expects just 35.
She has halved her 28-person staff, as her revenue dropped 55 percent. The state’s daily case total this week reached a new high and the governor ordered new limits on restaurants and other indoor gatherings.
“If the numbers keep growing and these shutdowns keep expanding, I have no idea what’s going to happen,” she said. “It’s going to be pretty bleak.”
Pisit Serewiwattana 
Mark Kuratana 
Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow 
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell 
