Stay healthy for sake of the economy

The think-tank was not cheerful about the first-quarter economic growth of 6 per cent it announced yesterday. Falling consumer and industry confidence, weighed down by political turmoil and soaring oil prices, has raised worries the Kingdom will experience a repeat of the woes of 2006.

Domestic demand will be the only engine driving the economy this year; exports won't help due to the global economic slowdown.

But the authorities fear the current gloomy confidence outlook will dampen private consumption and investment. As a result, the NESDB has kept its full-year growth projection unchanged at 4.5-5.5 per cent.

Apparently, the risk factors affect the health of policy-makers as well.

Ampon Kittiampon, NESDB secretary-general, recommended that seeking economic projections should watch his liver enzyme level as, in his experience, it moves inversely to the economic growth.

Ampon says it is already beyond the high level of four, explaining: "I get stressed by the economy."

Meanwhile, the health of the central bankers is also at risk.

After its committee made a decision on interest rates last Wednesday, the central bank assistant governor, Duangmanee Vongpradhip and her team rushed into a press conference to announce the decision at 2.30pm.

Everyone was told that the committee had kept the policy rate unchanged but no one knew what had happened behind the scenes.

The committee had spent more than five hours in the meeting. It was such a long one that the central bank officials had no time for lunch.

The news was just disclosed yesterday by Amara Sriphayak, a senior director. She said that the committee had to spend the time analysing all the relative factors carefully as they were working in the country's interest.

Let's all give them a hand for being more concerned about the Kingdom rather than any personal interest.

So, all you officials, please take good care of yourselves, otherwise there will be no one left who has good wishes for the country. Only bad ones.