• 
• 

We would not be able to depend on exports as an engine of growth as experienced in the past few years. Private investment is not expected to expand much because foreign investors from developed countries such as the US, the European nations and Japan are now not strong enough to expand overseas. They have to strengthen their operations at home first. Thai investors are also cautious about their investments currently. Some of them have even reduced the stocks of raw materials as well as merchandise in line with the slowdown of their export. Private consumption is expected to register positive growth as the price of various crops are still high enough to generate profit for farmers, even though it has decreased from the past season. Oil price has also reduced to the same level as that of 2007, which would not hinder the usual growth of private consumption. However, depending upon private consumption as the only growth engine, the economy would hardly grow beyond 2 to 3 per cent in the coming year. It is necessary to beef up public consumption and public investment. Both of us agreed with the government's decision to increase deficit by another Bt 100 billion in order to boost economic growth. However, it would be better for the country if this additional amount of Bt 100 billion would be spent on areas with long-lasting benefit to the public.

Sommai does not agree with the idea of spending this amount through SML, as a considerable proportion might be wasted. The benefits from a certain part of the SML currently spent is also doubtful. Another idea of the government to allocate part of the additional amount to village funds should also be given a second thought. I have followed the performance of the village fund of Bt1 million disbursed to 78,000 villages in 2002. I found that about one-third of the villages experienced loan defaults. The remaining two-thirds with good record of repayment do not really need additional fund beyond the Bt1 million, which they are still able to manage. Sommai mentioned that the government should invest more in buildings and facilities like state hospitals all over the country, which are presently inadequate. I fully agree with his suggestion as, in my view, several state hospitals upcountry are a clear evidence of how inadequate they are. A lot more must be invested so that Thai people upcountry receive adequate healthcare service, even though it would still not be up to the level of service provided in Bangkok. Such investment would benefit the public in the long run. The construction of buildings for hospitals upcountry would add to the economic growth as well as generate jobs all over the country.

This makes me think of another area of needed investment - the construction of classroom buildings and the procurement of educational equipment - which are much in need. Anyone who has visited upcountry schools would immediately find that there is a shortage of classrooms as well as teaching equipment and facilities for teachers. During my time at the Bank of Thailand, the BOT staff made a survey of library facilities available in schools upcountry and found that over 6,000 schools did not even have a little library corner, not to mention a room. BOT, together with Thai and foreign commercial banks, arranged for a set of necessary and interesting books with proper book shelves to be distributed to 1,200 schools at that time. The shelf cabinets were set up as a book corner for everyone in the school as there is no vacant room to be used as a library. The officers of BOT who delivered the book corner sets described to me the scene of a long line of pupils queuing up for certain books which they had heard of but never had an opportunity to read. I ran out of words and simply hoped that some one in a high position at the Ministry of Education would have good sense in this matter.

Besides books and libraries, necessary modern teaching facilities such as CD players and projectors to be used with educational CDs are also in short supply. Sport facilities are also inadequate. It seems to me that schools upcountry face shortages in everything needed for good teaching, especially schools in the remote areas. The excuses in the past for such shortage used to be the limited budget allocated to the Ministry of Education. At present, nonetheless, the government wants to spend Bt100 billion to stimulate the economy. The government has the liberty to allocate this additional budget to any area that would be most beneficial to the general public. What else would be more beneficial to the general public than the improvement of healthcare and educational facilities?

I would, therefore, request the government to rethink about the allocation of this additional budget of Bt100 billion to ensure that it would be used in the areas most needed by the public and not in the areas which would lead to rumors that some powerful guy outside the government is behind such allocation. The deputy prime minister and the minister of finance should take this opportunity to clear away such rumours by allocating them to the areas most in need. This will be a record to be proud of and would stay in your memory life long.

 Until next Monday