Thailand's Crisis: A critical analyis of Thai Economic Security - Essay Example

In the past decade Thailand has many times been in the international news for significant economic and political reasons, both good and bad. One of the fastest growing Southeast Asian economies until 1996, and dubbed by the World Bank as ‘a model for economic development,’ Thailand was reportedly the worst hit by the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. The mid-1997 financial and currency crisis had a severe impact on Thai economy and society. After recording a real compound annual growth rate of over 9 percent consistently between 1986 and 1996, Thailand experienced severe and long lasting contraction as the real GDP decreased to –6 per cent during 1997-1988.

While many macroeconomic imbalances and microeconomic structural problems have contributed to the crash, the impact of the crisis has been colossal, risking the nation’s socio-economic security as well as economic and political sovereignty. Though the nation has emerged fairly well from the economic crisis through economic reforms and restructuring as well as political intervention, many socio-political and economic issues still remains to be resolved so that the national security of Thailand may be guaranteed.

Clearly, Thailand’s national security issues and concerns since the late 1990s are the result of the insecurities and imbalances that surfaced the Thai socio-economic and political scenario during the period. The paper presents an analysis of the crisis using a simple framework of macroeconomic imbalances, microeconomic issues covering financial and corporate sectors and labor markets as well as political instabilities, and an analysis of the factors that have enabled Thai economy in recovering from the state of crisis.