On 22 April, Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith cautioned the country about our high household debts, which he said are high compared to other countries and are even higher now due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The Finance Minister said this is a risk for our aging society and urged saving discipline.
On 26 April, Energy Minister Supattanapong Punmeechao said the opposite. The Energy Minister really wants the economy to grow by 4%. He wants this so much that he will introduce measures to urge the people to spend.
\u201cIf you love the country, please go into your savings and spend,\u201d he said.
It makes perfect sense that the Energy Minister made this plea right after an economic and national security meeting chaired by General Prayut Chan-o-cha. One man couldn\u2019t have come up with this idea. Such nonsense has to be collective.
The question is, was the Finance Minister in the same meeting? Did they talk?
\u201cIf the Thai people help by spending, perhaps we will achieve the 4% GDP,\u201d the Energy Minister said. \u201cIf you spend half of your savings, the economy will grow by 1%,\u201d
\u201cPlease sacrifice for the country.\u201d
Meanwhile, the tourism forecast drops by half from six million people to three million people because of the third COVID-19 outbreak and slowness in vaccination. Kitanakin Bank puts economic growth at 2.2%. Of course, people aren\u2019t spending.
Then there\u2019s the lockdown that is not called a lockdown, and how are we even to spend?
New sneakers to run in the park? Parks are closed. Fancy dinner at an expensive restaurant? 9pm closing; can\u2019t drink alcohol. New gym membership? Gyms are closed. New brand name clothes? To go where, 7-Eleven? Plane tickets and luxury resorts? Can\u2019t travel.
Besides, we have to save our money because it\u2019s a 20,000 baht fine for not wearing a mask in public or our private car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On 22 April, Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith cautioned the country about our high household debts, which he said are high compared to other countries and are even higher now due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Finance Minister said this is a risk for our aging society and urged saving discipline. On 26 April, Energy Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[165,12,14,13],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-arkhom-termpittayapaisith","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":481,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}