Association president Predee Daochai said today (February 25) that banks have already contacted their customers to offer them relief packages.

Among the measures for businesses in the tourism sector is the suspension of principle payment for a maximum one year, during which they need to pay only interest.

The packages for customers of auto loans include extension of repayment schedules and reduction of the monthly repayment amount.

Predee added that the association would closely monitor the situation until it returns to normal.

He said the decline in visitor numbers this year is due to concern over the coronavirus outbreak.

The fair is on from today until February 29 at Impact Muang Thong Thani convention centre.

He said the department made the right decision to go ahead and organise the fair, aiming to turn Thailand into the world’s jewellery hub.

He expects transactions worth Bt2.4 billion at the fair.

The country has targeted gems and jewellery exports growth of one per cent this year (excluding gold) worth Bt500 billion.

There are 972 local and foreign exhibitors at this year’s event.

The event has stepped up measures to deal with the outbreak to ensure visitor safety. For example, thermal scanners and thermal guns are deployed at the entrance. The venue will also frequently spray disinfectant at touch points, while face masks are available for visitors.

“ Private companies are collaborating to organise fairs, events and online promotions, aimed at stimulating travel and spending among Thais until the Songkran Festival” he added.

Thai AirAsia’s chief executive officer Santisuk Klongchaiya said the airline had launched a discount-code campaign on domestic routes during February 24 to 26 for flights scheduled to take off from February 24 to May 31.

Meanwhile, Vietjet and Thai Lion Air are running discount campaign for February.

“Tourism Authority of Thailand estimated that the country would lose over Bt250 billion in revenue if the Covid-19 scourge lasted for more than six months, and I agreed to its projection” said Chairat Trirattanajarasporn, president of Tourism Council of Thailand (TCT).

TCT expects 35 million in foreign arrivals this year , down from its previous target of 41.5 million.

Association of Thai Travel Agent (ATTA) President Vichit Prakobgosol said the number of Chinese tourists is expected to decrease from 11 million to 8 -9 million, due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

“However, it would reach 9 to 10 million if the government and private sector continued to run marketing campaigns throughout the year,” he added.

ATTA president also expected the Covid-19 situation to improve in the next two weeks, and China would be able to contain spread of the virus within April. “ China would allow its citizens to travel abroad in May and Thailand would be their first destinations ”.

Krungsri head of research and chief economist Somprawin Manprasert said the key factors that have affected the economy are the budget bill postponement, the Covid-19 outbreak and a severe drought.

The postponement forced the budget disbursement to begin in the middle or end of March and only Bt280 billion will be disbursed in fiscal year 2020, while the government expects to invest Bt430 billion of the budget, resulting in 0.1 per cent of GDP contraction.

The Covid-19 situation is quite unpredictable, Somprawin said. He believes the crisis will see improvement in May, but the effect on tourism will be dramatic as global incomes correspond to Chinese tourist spending, resulting in a 0.44 per cent loss for Thai GDP.

The severe drought has already cost the agriculture sector a Bt24-billion loss, and if the situation remains dire in June, damages will raise to Bt41 billion, leading to a GDP contraction of 0.3 per cent.

Somprawin expects the Monetary Policy Committee to cut the interest rate from 1 per cent to 0.75 per cent in its meeting on March 25, while financial measures may be launched to stimulate the economy. But if this fails, the economy will expand less than 1.5 per cent.

“We need to focus on consumer sentiments such as confidence in spending and investment,” Somprawin said. “Another concern is financial. If banks don’t want to extend loans and consumers don’t need them, the dynamics of the economy will be a slowdown.”

In the short term, the economy witnessed a -0.7 per cent drop in the first quarter, while for GDP it was -1.5 per cent compared to the fourth quarter of 2018. In the second quarter, economic expansion is expected to be 1.3 per cent compared to the first quarter, he said.

However, this prediction is based on the present coronavirus situation. If it becomes worse, the economy would be dragged down.

He expected the baht to move in a range of Bt31.60 to Bt31.70 against the greenback on Tuesday.

The baht moved up again as export of gold increased, suggesting that Thailand will remain a gold exporter when demand for the precious metal in the market is high. The large volume of gold exported last month partly contributed to a return of Thai exports growth, rising to 3.35 per cent after six straight months of contraction.

As investors rushed to buy safe-haven assets over concerns of Covid-19 spreading outside China, investors are expected to continue to dump Thai stocks, he said. They, however, may buy Thai bonds, so their investment strategy would stabilise the baht value, preventing it from further sliding today.

US financial markets faced a sell-off on Monday night, as the S&P500 fell 3.35 per cent, while in Europe, the Euro Stoxx and Britain’s FTSE 100, plunged 4.01 per cent and 3.34 per cent respectively. It was their worst performance since August last year. In the global bond markets, the US 10-year yield dipped below 1.40 per cent for the first time since 2016 while the Japanese bond yield also went down to minus 0.09 per cent, the lowest level since November last year as investors worried about the impact of Covid-19 on the economy.

Investors see Japanese bonds and the yen as safe-haven assets. The Australian and New Zealand dollars went down due to decreasing prices of commodities products. This made the US dollar unchanged against other major currencies last night.

Trudeau met with his top officials in Ottawa on Monday morning as provincial authorities moved in to clear a protest site near Belleville, Ontario. The blockade by Mohawk leaders was erected Feb. 6 in solidarity with some Wet’suwet’en Nation hereditary chiefs in British Columbia who oppose TC Energy Corp.’s Coastal GasLink pipeline, a C$6.6 billion ($5 billion) liquefied natural gas project.

“We are committed to reconciliation and we are committed to sitting down and having a dialogue over the specific problem that exists with the Wet’suwet’en,” Transport Minister Marc Garneau told reporters after the cabinet meeting. “But at the same time the barricades had to come down because it was having a profound effect on the economy.”

Demonstrations in several provinces by environmental and indigenous-rights activists had crippled freight and passenger traffic across Canada. Some blockades came down thanks to injunctions obtained by Canadian National Railway Co., but the one in Tyendinaga, Ontario — along the key Toronto-to-Montreal corridor — persisted past a midnight deadline Sunday, prompting police to move in.

While Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said he is concerned about potential blowback from the detentions, he doesn’t think the Mohawk protesters intended to cause harm to the broader population. “Once those barricades are down, come back to the table. We’ve got so much work to do,” he said after the meeting with Trudeau.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, speaking Monday afternoon outside the legislature, added: “We’re not only fighting days of suspicion and mistrust, but decades and even centuries in some cases.”

Protesters were detained by police in Tyendinaga, as provincial governments followed through on warnings that they would clear rail lines that have been blocked for weeks.

At least three demonstrators were restrained by provincial police Monday morning, according to the state broadcaster. They were warned Sunday that they’d face a police investigation and charges if they didn’t obey a midnight deadline to disperse, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported, citing a Mohawk source. The blockade is about 130 miles northeast of Toronto.

“The Ontario Provincial Police has taken action to resolve protest activity and remove the barriers to rail service in and near Tyendinaga Township,” according to a statement. “We have remained respectful of the ongoing dialogue, including issues of sovereignty between our Indigenous communities and various federal ministers.”

Trudeau, who spoke with premiers from British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec on Sunday, informed them “of measures being taken to ensure that critical needs are addressed across Canada, including propane, chemicals to treat drinking water, and essential agricultural products,” according to a statement from his office.

On Saturday, Blair called officials in Ontario and Quebec to discuss “ongoing work to end” the blockades, according to statements from his office. He told Quebec’s minister of municipal affairs and housing that he “appreciated the measured and effective approach taken by the police in Quebec.”

Having asked for patience throughout last week, Trudeau changed tack on Friday afternoon. “We cannot continue to watch Canadians suffer shortages and layoffs,” the prime minister said in a televised address to the nation, adding that the responsibility to enforce court orders lies with provincial police forces. “The barricades must now come down,” he said.

The Dow Jones industrial average sank by more than 1,000 points, or 3.6%, to close at 27,961.01 after Wall Street interpreted new disease clusters in South Korea, Italy and Iran as a sign that the respiratory illness has outraced confinement efforts. The technology-heavy Nasdaq index fell by more than 3.7%.

Factories around the world are grappling with parts shortages as their Chinese suppliers struggle to resume normal operations. With global economic engines sputtering, the Federal Reserve and other central banks face calls for emergency help.

But central bank chiefs may be ill equipped to battle the economic consequences of the flu-like illness, which has prevented many Chinese workers from returning to their assembly lines and kept consumers at home instead of shopping. Interest rates are in negative territory in Europe and at near-historic lows in the United States. And while making credit less expensive – the Fed’s standard tool for combating a slump – may offset some of the financial upheaval, it can do little to remedy broken supply chains or ease individuals’ fears of contagion.

“There’s just growing angst in the investor community that this thing is more serious than we realized,” said Chris Meekins, an analyst with Raymond James and a former Trump administration preparedness official. “When you’re worried about catching a disease, you’re not going to go out to dinner; you’re not going to go to the movies or sporting events or concerts. The only question is how widespread this becomes.”

President Donald Trump weighed in after the close of trading with an upbeat tweet proclaiming the virus “very much under control in the USA” and urging investors to adopt a buy-the-dip approach. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” the president tweeted.

One of his top economic advisers was equally positive. “The coronavirus will not last forever. The U.S. looks well contained and the economy is fundamentally sound,” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told The Washington Post in an interview late Monday. “If you’re a long-term investor, you should seriously consider buying these dips,” he said.

Still, the administration’s cheerleading seemed at odds with news that the number of U.S. cases had reached 53, including 36 patients who had been evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and returned to the United States.

The comments also defied the market’s verdict, showing that the illness extends into every corner of the global economy. Shares of automakers such as Renault are down nearly 30% this year. Three cruise lines – Norwegian Cruises, Royal Caribbean and Carnival – are all off by more than one-quarter. And declines in ExxonMobil, Burberry and Air China shares show the impact spreading into energy, consumer goods and airlines.

The financial toll spiked after reports over the weekend of sharp increases in case numbers in South Korea, Italy and Iran. Italy, which Moody’s says will fall into recession this quarter because of the virus, has the largest known outbreak outside Asia, with more than 200 confirmed cases and six deaths as of Monday. The caseload in South Korea, a critical link in the technology industry’s pan-Asian supply chain, climbed to 833. And a spokesman for Iran’s health ministry said the death toll in that country had reached 12.

Wall Street and official Washington were slow to grasp the coronavirus’s danger. Kudlow said at the end of January that the administration anticipated “no material impact” from the virus that first appeared in Wuhan, China. Likewise, stocks climbed steadily through the first several weeks of the health crisis.

But that sanguine mood is gone. Goldman Sachs on Monday cut its estimate for U.S. economic growth in the first quarter to 1.2% from an original 1.4%, which would make it one of the weakest three-month periods in Trump’s presidency. And after weeks of playing down the likely impact outside China, investors on Monday rushed into traditional safe havens, sending the price of gold soaring as government bond yields, which move opposite prices, approached decade-old lows. Oil also fell into bear market territory amid expectations of prolonged global weakness.

“It may not be an actual pandemic yet, but it’s an economic pandemic,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Grant Thornton. “It’s global in scope and disrupting activity around the world.”

Monday’s markets action showed the rapid evolution of the coronavirus from a limited threat to supply chains into an across-the-board tightening of financial conditions, said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist for Oxford Economics. A spike in volatility may prompt businesses to pause planned investments. And as nervous global investors sought safety in U.S. assets, they pushed up the value of the U.S. dollar.

That will make imported goods for American consumers less expensive, chilling inflation and leaving the Fed further from hitting its goal of 2% annual price increases, which the central bank sees as a sign of a healthy economy. As a result, some investors now expect the Fed to cut rates as soon as next month to counteract some of the economic weakness.

“The Fed can’t eliminate all the risks on its own,” Daco said. “What the Fed can do is prevent a worsening of the situation.”

Narayana Kocherlakota, a former member of the Fed’s policymaking committee, called for the central bank to cut rates before the economy feels the full effects of the coronavirus. At a time when rates already are hovering around 1.5 to 1.75%, the risk of waiting is that the economy first tips into recession and the Fed doesn’t have room for a big enough cut to pull it out.

“The Fed has to do its best to keep the economy as healthy as it can and stimulate demand now,” said Kocherlakota, an economics professor at the University of Rochester. “It has to ease the pain for the economy as much as possible.”

Monday’s unsettling events showed that investors had wrongly assumed the coronavirus would be largely a China problem that might hobble the global economy in the first quarter but not beyond, said Meekins, who spent 19 months as a top Trump administration preparedness official in the Department of Health and Human Services.

On Monday, Chinese leaders postponed the National People’s Congress – the most prominent event on their political calendar – set for March 5. Beijing also reversed course after saying it would relax travel restrictions on the outbreak’s hotbed of Wuhan.

Raymond James’ estimate of the risk of a widespread outbreak in the United States has risen steadily over the past two weeks from 1 in 7, to 1 in 5 to 1 in 3. “And that may still be too low,” he said.

Gold, a safe haven in times of turmoil, climbed 1% to $1,659 an ounce. Crude oil skidded 4% on worries that the outbreak will subdue demand for months. China is the world’s largest energy consumer, but it has been buying less crude amid virus-related travel restrictions. Meanwhile, major oil producers have yet to reach a deal on emergency measures to scale back output. The drop in oil prices will ramp up pressure on OPEC – the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – and Russia to reduce oil supplies at an upcoming meeting in March.

The likelihood of more bad news as the virus expands to more countries makes further market rockiness likely, which could prompt the Fed to act, according to a research note from Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. But it took a nearly 20% market drop and additional credit tightness in late 2018 to convince the Fed to retreat from plans to raise rates, so any move may not be imminent, he wrote.

Nathan Sheets, chief economist for PGIM Fixed Income, said the Fed can do only so much to help. “If U.S. firms can’t produce because supply chains are broken, a rate cut won’t get production lines rolling again. If spending is down because consumer confidence has been hit, a rate cut won’t reverse these anxieties,” he said. “That said, a rate cut can create a somewhat more supportive macro environment – a safety net of sorts – to help the economy absorb the shock.”

In a CNBC International interview that aired Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said it would be difficult to “have strong predictions on the economic issues without being able to predict the health outcome.”

“I think we need another three or four weeks to see how the virus reacts until we really have good statistical data,” Mnuchin said.

The Chinese government reported 409 new coronavirus cases and another 150 deaths by the end of Sunday. There are now more than 77,000 confirmed cases, with a cumulative death toll of more than 2,500.