The central bank has relaxed its foreign-exchange rules to allow financial institutions not to report non-resident transactions worth less than Bt1 million.
Bank of Thailand (BOT) Assistant Governor Suchada Kirakul said notification of the rule change had been sent to all financial institutions. Effective past Tuesday, they can now make a collective report on non-resident transactions worth Bt1 million to Bt25 million.
Before Tuesday, all transactions worth between Bt500,001 and Bt25 million were required to be reported collectively on a daily basis.
The BOT also relaxed rules on interest-linked transactions for non-resident accounts, permitting financial institutions not to submit reports on the transactions. Before, each had to be reported on a case-by-case basis.
The relaxation follows continued inflows into Thailand.
The baht yesterday closed at 32.69 to the US dollar after earlier advancing to 32.59, its strongest level since June 6, 2008, Bloomberg reported.
The currency has appreciated 1.8 per cent so far this year, the best performance among Asia's 10 most-active currencies, excluding the yen.
The appreciation has been attributed to foreign-investment inflows to the stock market, with foreign net buys of Bt4.4 billion.
As of the end of last year, Thailand's foreign reserves stood at US$142 billion (Bt4.65 trillion), up 28.61 per cent, or $31.68 billion, from 2008.
In baht terms, as of January the reserves were valued at Bt4.7 trillion, up 22.22 per cent year on year, or an additional Bt858 billion.
The BOT attributed the increase to foreign assets, which were up 27.53 per cent to $137.6 trillion in January.
The value of the central bank's gold stood at $2.9 billion.
