Nation Thailand
New World Bank Report Maps Thailand Beyond Bangkok-Led Growth
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A new World Bank report launched in Bangkok says Thailand must lift growth to 5.4 per cent a year to reach high-income status by 2037, not 2048.
Key facts
- On present trends, Thailand will not become a high-income country until around 2048
- Since then, Thailand has created around 11 million formal jobs from a workforce of about 40 million, more than doubled GDP per capita, and nearly eliminated poverty at the $4.2-a-day line, alongside sizeable gains in life expectancy and
- Growth has slowed markedly since the global financial crisis and, over the past few years, has averaged just 2.2 per cent since the Covid-19 pandemic — a pace that would leave Thailand reaching high-income status only around 2048.
- The report's central proposition is that lifting annual real GDP per capita growth to 5.4 per cent over the next decade could instead deliver that milestone by 2037, and it decomposes that target into a 2.9 per cent baseline potential
Summary
On present trends, Thailand will not become a high-income country until around 2048. A new World Bank report launched on Thursday sets out what it would take to get there more than a decade sooner — by 2037 — and argues that doing so will require Thailand to more than double its per capita growth rate and rebuild the model that has driven its economy for the past 35 years.
"Building Thailand's Future Today" was unveiled at the Bangkok Business Summit: Reinvent Thailand, Resilient ASEAN, by Stephen Ndegwa, World Bank Division Director for Thailand and Myanmar; Katherine Anne Stapleton, World Bank Senior Economist; and Kwanpadh Suddhi-Dhamakit, World Bank Thailand Senior Country Officer, in a session moderated by Annie Koh of Singapore Management University.