Why are we in this
mess?
Thailand Development Research Institute
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Our present
economic travails have been the occasion for a great deal of scapegoat hunting.
But to ask who committed the errors is not as useful as asking how the errors
came to be committed, as it is my intention to find ways and means by which
similar errors can be avoided.
The argument will be
developed in three stages. In the first stage, it will be shown that although
the root cause of the Thai crisis of 1997 lies in excessive borrowing by the
private sector, its effect has been multiplied by misguided policies,
particularly those emanating from the Bank of Thailand.
The
first and most important point to be made about t
Thai capitalism is
based largely on family business, even companies listed on the stock exchange
(except for subsidiaries of multinationals). As the economy grew, these
businesses grew in tandem, in many cases even faster. By and large, the families
displayed little willingness to relinquish control over their firms.
This corporate debt
problem has an important foreign component.
True, while corporate
debt was growing, the equity market also made great strides. But as the movement
in the debt/equity ratio given above made clear, the equity was not used to
lower the debt dependence. Rather, it was used to leverage more debt.
Financial institutions
provide loans more readily when land or real estate is put up as collateral.
Normally, of course, the amount of loans provided is less than the value of the
collateral. But when land prices were rising rapidly, as during the boom years
of 1988-1995, the investment in land and real estate paid off additionally in
terms of the ability to float more debt. Part of the increased debt was used to
purchase even more land, which drove prices up further, and so on.
The economy was already
slowing down from the heady two-digit levels in 1988-1990 with the onset of the
Gulf war in 1991, but it was still quite high at more than 8 percent per annum,
which was considered then to be the normal rate of growth for the Thai economy.
Demand for real estate continued to be brisk, but building was proceeding at
such a rapid pace that it was a matter of time before there would be an excess
supply.
Hazardous for Thailand,
a great deal of corporate borrowing, used primarily to invest in long-term
assets, was from the financial institutions, whose main sources of funds were
relatively short-term deposits. True, a domestic bond market was being developed
in the mid-1990s but was still quite small when the crisis struck.
Policy
mistakes
To say that the crisis has its origins in private borrowing is not to absolve
the government from blame for the resulting problems. The first misstep made by
the authorities was the decision to open up the capital account.
Within less than four
years, the amount lent through the BIBF rose quickly from nothing to US$31.2
billion by the end of 1996, or almost a half of total private foreign debt. It
is to be noted that much of the lending, which was at lower interest rates than
that from domestic sources (see below), went into the capital-intensive sectors
such as chemicals, petroleum and construction sectors.
Opening the capital
account is not by itself necessarily bad. The second misstep was to retain a
fixed exchange rate regime alongside the open capital account.
Regardless of the cause
of the differential, the cheap loans were very attractive from the borrower's
point of view, and they continued to borrow merrily, presumably confident in the
strength of the baht, a confidence bolstered by the high level of reserves which
stood at about nine months of imports. Moreover, most of the loans contracted
with the BIBF were of short duration, and if they were loans by non-financial
companies, they were usually uncovered. Financial institutions are required by
the central bank to hedge most of their foreign-currency borrowings.
The heavy in flow of
foreign capital occasioned by the establishment of the BIBF had three
consequences.
First, the BIBF gave a
second wind to the property boom. It had become obvious to observers of the real
estate scene as early as 1994 that the dreaded excess supply had arrived. Sales
were beginning to falter. With out the BIBF, the country would have faced a
credit crunch and the collapse of real estate companies (and perhaps some
finance companies) at least a few years earlier. It is arguable that in that
case the collapse would have been less spectacular.
Secondly, the high
volume of foreign borrowing led to a decline in our competitiveness. Baht and
dollar inflation rates were running roughly in parallel until 1994, when the
former began to inch up to 5 and approached 6 percent (year-on-year), while the
latter was heading downwards to 2 percent.
The third impact was on
the current account deficits, which soared to 8 percent of GNP. With rapidly
rising exports (ranging from 15 to 20 percent per annum), it could be argued
that such increased in indebtedness could be accommodated. However, a sign of
trouble showed up unmistakably in the second half of 1996 when, quite suddenly,
the export growth rate sank to zero percent. It is still not clear what caused
this abrupt decline, but the higher domestic inflation rate was at least partly
of blame.
Despite
these signs, the Bank of Thailand committed its third misstep by refusing to
take action on the exchange rate. Instead, it blustered its way out by arguing
that:
(1)
The
large current account deficit, at least up to 1995, was cyclical, and was
connected with a temporary in vestment upturn occasioned by increasing capital
use, industrial upgrading, infrastructure investment and a surge in Board of
Investment promotion.
(2)
While
the BIBF loans did lead to an observed shortening of the average maturity of
Thai foreign debt, this was party a statistical illusion caused by a change of
borrowing source by the participant bank, which, if foreign, used revolving
funds (appearing as short-term inflow in the Thai balance of payments) to
finance their long-term loans to local companies.
(3)
In any
case, short-term debt posed little risk to the Thai economy, as it was covered
by adequate foreign exchange reserves, and also because the strong fundamentals
would rule out the possibility of a flow reversal.
(4)
The
export stagnation recorded in the second half of 1996 is temporary, owing to a
decline in world trade growth, supply shortages in the fisheries sector due to
diseases and a maritime dispute with a neighbouring country, and to the reduced
competitiveness of the more labour-intensive sectors, and is expected to recover
to a growth of 7.7 percent in 1997 "on account of the resurgence of demand
from trading partner countries, as well as the impact from export promotion
measures".
(5)
Much of
this we now know, of course, to be wishful thinking. But in 1996 and in the
first half of 1997, as a consequence of these beliefs the Bank of Thailand
persisted in defending the old exchange rate against at least three major
attacks by foreign speculators, in November 1996 and in February and May 1997.
(6)
The
reserve depletion from these attacks was hidden from the public by the forward
sale of its dollars to support the baht. Nevertheless, even the reported foreign
exchange reserve fell from US$40 billion at the beginning of 1997 to US$33.8
billion at the end of June on the eve of the flotation of the baht.
This small fall in the
reserves masked the true situation, for it was later admitted by the Bank of
Thailand that to counter the speculative runs, some US$23 billion of the reserve
was sold forward. The 33 percent downward movement of the baht would mean that
to clear the forward transactions would cost the bank some US$7-8 billion,
surely one of the world's more expensive currency defence. As a point of
comparison, the defence of the pound in 1991 was alleged to have cost the
British government about US$10 billion.
Consequently, when the
Bank of Thailand floated the baht on July 2, it was done with essentially zero
foreign exchange reserve.
In addition to the
decline in the foreign exchange reserve, there were also increasing claims on
the central bank's other assets, primarily from the imploding financial system.
Here we come to the fourth, and probably the most damaging, misstep, or perhaps
a series of missteps from the Bank of Thailand.
A precursor of the 1997
implosion in the financial system was the troubles of Bangkok Bank of Commerce
(BBC), a small bank.
The botched attempt at
a take-over of management and the failure of the criminal action are merely two
of the many examples of the way the central bank mismanaged the BBC affair. In
1996, parliamentary debates revealed to the public the extent of politically
motivated loans made by the previous officers of BBC. A run began to develop and
continued causing the Bank of Thailand to pour in almost $7
billion from its Financial Institution Development
Fund (FIDF) to support it.
As the real estate
market collapsed in 1996, rumours concerning the loan problems of the finance
companies began to spread, fanned in March 1997 by the central bank's publicly
announced action requiring 10 of them to raise their capital within 60 days.
They were allowed however to remain open.
Consequently, there
began to be runs, first on these finance companies, but later on others and on
the smaller banks. The lack of liquidity caused by these runs was covered by
further loans from the FIDF. In June, the operations of 16 finance companies
including seven of the original 10 were suspended and they were told either to
find additional capital or merge with other firms.
This belief stems from
action taken by the bank in earlier cases of failures. Each time the finance
companies were suspended during 1997, there would be pronouncements from senior
officials that all deposits would be guaranteed. There was also talk of the
guarantee being extended to the creditors of the finance companies as well.
Clearly, the Bank of
Thailand could not continue to support the baht internationally and troubled
finance companies domestically. This was well recognised by the markets.
Since most market
operators knew or speculated that the bank had run out of reserves, the exchange
rate was floating freely (actually "sinking" would be a more accurate
description) more than it was managed. The value of a baht deteriorated steadily
until on Nov 6 it stood at some 33 percent below the level on July 1, or the
price of a dollar had increased 50 percent.
At the same time as the
announcement that Thailand had sought the support of the International Monetary
Fund in August 1997, another batch of 42 finance companies were told to suspend
their operations, bringing the total number of suspended finance companies to
58, out of the original 91. The 15 banks are still functioning, although rumours
persist concerning the soundness of some of the smaller banks. Naturally, these
actions and these fears led to another massive run on all domestic financial
institutions.
Because of the exchange
rate mismanagement and the meltdown in the financial sector, Thailand is now
poised at the edge of what will probably turn out to be the most severe slump it
has experienced in the last four decades.
The
decline of the technocracy
Mostly technocrats have
made Thai macro-economic policies. The policy failures of the last few years can
be laid fairly and squarely on the officials of the Bank of Thailand. Given that
the bank, and the technocrats more generally, were once highly respected, the
question naturally arises as to why they became so spectacularly incompetent all
of a sudden. To answer that question, historical detour is necessary.
Strictly speaking, the
technocracy managing the country's macro-economy consists of officials from the
Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Thailand, the Budget Bureau and the National
Economic and Social Development Board. This group emerged as a result of a major
overhaul of the country's economic management system during the regime of Field
Marshal Sarit Thanarat (1959-63). Under him and his immediate successor, until
1973, this technocracy enjoyed considerable autonomy and managed to keep at bay
the demands of the military, which at that time occupied key political posts.
The relationship
between the technocracy and its military rules was far from smooth. The latter's
need to expand government budgets in general and the military budget in
particular was a constant cause for conflict, as were some of their corrupt
activities that entered the radar screen of the technocrats (for example,
contracts to print banknote). But by and large, a modus vivendi was achieved,
because both shared the vision that the economy needed to grow, Which for the
technocrat was the desired aim and for the military was the means by which they
could obtain greater spoils.
The emergence of a more
open politics since 1973 has not necessarily witnessed a linear trend towards
democracy. The role of the army, in particular, has waxed and waned, and with it
the power of the technocrats. By and large, during the post-1973 period, the
rise in power of the army tended to see the power of the technocrats in
macro-economic management rising. Similarly, whenever the army's over waned, the
power of the technocrats would go into eclipse.
Because of the need for
patronage on the part of the elected politicians, technocrats began to have an
adversarial relationship with them, and naturally sought the army as allies to
push their case and to protect them. But one must not conclude that the
technocracy necessarily became powerless every time the military disappeared
from the scene.
In more recent years,
it is necessary to refine the notion of technocracy further and break it down to
at least two sub-groups. One sub-group, in charge of monetary policy, would be
the Bank of Thailand with its own tradition and others. These others consist of
civil servants in the Ministry of Finance, the Budget Bureau and the planning
agency, who are primarily in charge of the country's fiscal policy. I shall
discuss this latter sub-group first.
The evolution of this
latter group is part of the general evolution of the Thai civil service.
Over the years, the
quality and competency of the Thai civil service has been declining,
precipitously during the last decade. During its heyday, the technocrats used to
enjoy considerable autonomy in the formulation of the country's fiscal policy,
but with the erosion in quality, this autonomy has eroded steadily. But, until
this year, the decline has not seriously affected the outcome, for
coincidentally the last decade has seen an unprecedented boom in the economy,
which generated rapid increases in government revenue.
Indeed, so rapid were
these increases that even our politicians were unable to generate enough
expenditure projects to absorb the increases, so that the country enjoyed a long
series of fiscal surpluses, which ahs come to an end, and has in the past three
months put a severe strain on our fiscal policy machinery.
The history of the Bank
of Thailand is quite different, however. The stature, organisation and ethos of
the bank was established during the 1950s and the 1960s by the then governor,
Puey Ungphakorn, a revered figure among the country's technocrats and academics
Another of Mr Puey's
legacies was the expenditure on the bank's personnel development. It spent more
on this than probably any other organisation, public or private.
The management
structure designed for the 1960s, there was a clear gap between senior
management and the rest of the staff in terms of age, experience and authority,
a gap that was emphasised rather than offset by the charisma that is peculiarly
Mr Puey's.
A management structure
therefore was designed with the internal power of the bank very much
concentrated in the hands of the governor who, it was thought, would shield the
bank from the depredations of the military government of the time. This
concentration of authority in the hands of the governor worked as long as the
gap in seniority and authority between the top and lower levels of management
remained.
However, with the
scholarship programme of the 1960s beginning to bear fruit, the graduates
returned to fill up the middle management and began to rise through the ranks A
critical turning point was the appointment to the governorship of Vijit Supinit
who had been among the first batch of scholars sent abroad. By this time the men
and women who were trained under the scholarship had filled up the senior and
middle management levels of the bank.
In terms of intrinsic
ability, the governor is now only the first among equals; in terms of legally
vested powers, however, he is very much at the top. As a consequence, the prize
of governorship and the fight for it among the top management became a very
important backdrop that undermined effective teamwork. Additionally, as the
staff tended to pursue a lifetime career within the bank, competition among the
staff led to severe factionalism.
As a result of all
this, the pool of available talent was not put to effective use and, worse, the
dedication to the public interest that suffused the bank's ethos in the period
before 1990 has all but disappeared. Externally, the governor is accountable
only to the Minister of Finance. Increasingly, his position is being held at the
pleasure of the minister. The governor does not have a fixed-term appointment,
but can be dismissed by the minister of finance - a previously rare event, but
which is beginning to occur with increasing frequency (of the five governors
holding the position in the 1980s, two were dismissed). This trend has made
probable what I would call "implicit interventions" by the minister,
the governor will anticipate the minister's desires and follow the current
political line.
However,
by and large, ministers of finance, regardless of whether they were former
technocrats or elected politicians, have been content to let monetary policy and
the supervision of the financial institutions rest largely in the hands of the
bank.
Points
of conflict have centred on exchange rate policies more than any other aspects
of the bank's activities (although interest rate policies are beginning to be
contested as well). As both the bank and the Ministry of Finance naturally wish
to minimise conflict, the authorities have gravitated towards a fixed exchange
rate regime, and have run the monetary policy to achieve the simple target of
maintaining the pegged rate. More importantly, when the time came to alter the
pegged rate at the beginning of 1997, it appears that the Bank of Thailand was
reluctant to do so for fear of political repercussions, and example of implicit
intervention.
Combining
my observations that the civil service section of the technocracy has declined
and that the Bank of Thailand has severe internal tensions, I conclude that it
is a dispirited and demoralised technocracy that confronted the economic crisis.
Indeed it is doubtful even whether an autonomous technocracy exists any more.
True,
the Bank of Thailand is still very much in charge of monetary policy (including
exchange rate policy) and of the supervision of financial institutions, but it
has been so badly wounded by the BBC affair that it no longer has much authority
with the public to obtain adequate support for its actions. The fiscal policy
side of the technocracy has clearly disintegrated. The degree of co-operation
between the four key agencies is now minimal.
With
a non-functioning technocracy, political leadership becomes an essential
backstop. It's here that our parliamentary system failed us badly.
A
political solution to our woes?
Since 1992, the form of
government in Thailand has been parliamentary in as full a sense of that term as
it has ever been. However, even though it has now flowered fully, the Thai
parliament has grown in the shadow of governments dominated by the armed forces.
It has thereby acquired certain habits which ill equip it to deal with the kind
of problems Thailand now faces.
To
them, and more importantly, to their constituents, the public treasury is a
milch cow, and the MPs' central chore is to milk that cow, and bring the milk
back home to their constituents. This arrangement was subject to the caveat that
total public expenditure was under the control of the technocrats. Consequently,
much of the struggle centred on the allocation, with very little said of the
size of the budget, and still less of taxes. Indeed, most of the moves towards
tax cuts during the boom were initiated by the bureaucrats with the Ministry of
Finance.
But obviously, the use
of taxpayers' money is not the only means by which a politician can bring
benefits back to his home constituency.
It is widely expected
that such projects will generate side benefits to the rural elite, who are quite
action in the construction business. It is therefore widely expected that when
the politicians and the rural elite are up for election, money will be bought.
Consequently,
in the competition arena of Thai democratic politics, a politician's ability to
formulate clear national economic policies, even those biased towards the rural
areas in general, does not weigh very highly in the electors' consideration.
Political parties have very little interest in developing this sort of talent or
of establishing connections with pressure groups to help them formulate a
coherent set of policies.
True,
political parties have lines of communications with business, and many of the
politicians are themselves businessmen, but these connections serve mostly to
raise corruption money through the granting of projects and concessions to
individual firms. More importantly, the business influence sometimes leads to
distortions of national policies, distortions that are not challenged in
parliament even if they sometimes blatantly favour particular businesses.
That
elected politicians are generally not interested in national policy issues is
demonstrated in the attitude to the Ministry of Finance, which is the central
organ for the formulation of macroeconomic policy. Thai politicians are as keen
on gaining office as politicians anywhere else, and one would expect that this
key ministry would be contested fiercely. However, they have generally shied
away from it. They have generally shied away from it. They have been happy to
see this particular post filled by former technocrats of bankers.
Of course, there are
exceptions to this generally bleak picture of politicians. Not all politicians
are corrupt, nor do all segments among the electorate expect patronage money.
But these exceptions are precisely that – exceptions. They have not been able
to undermine the majority predilection for corruption and patronage, and for the
accompanying parochial politics.
It is therefore not
altogether surprising that when the economic crisis hit Thailand in intensity in
1997, the public authorities should find themselves in such disarray. In the
end, a financially, institutionally and politically bankrupt Thailand had to go
cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund.
The
way out
Unusually, IMF's entry
into Thailand elicited an overwhelmingly favourable response from Thai opinion
leaders. Only resisting that entry until the very last moment was the Bank of
Thailand, in the past always a receptive interlocutor of the IMF and also of the
World Bank.
Not that the package
which the Thai government signed was in any way difficult to fathom
intellectually. It was as conventional a package as any from the IMF, and any
economist worth his salt, with the kind of information that the IMF had, could
come up with a similar one.
The gap which the IMF
filled was a gap in authority. The Thai government had to sign away its right to
manage its own economy, because by August 1997 that was the only thing it was
capable of doing.
I have argued above
that the crisis appeared first as an economic and financial crisis. It led to
exposure of technocratic incompetence and failure that could not be overcome by
our political leaders because the problem was beyond their comprehension. Does
this mean that Thailand is from now on condemned to decades of macro-economic
mismanagement, relieved from time to time by an IMF bailout?
All hope may not be
lost. The only bright occurrence in our annus horribilis was the passage of a
new constitution. This new constitution embodies provisions that are a radical
departure from previous constitutions. Cuch is the extent of the change in the
rules of the game that it is difficult to forecast the outcome of the next
election.
The reason for hope
rests with the expected change – in the long run – in the complexion of the
new parliament. For alongside 400 members elected from individual
constituencies, there will be a further 100 members belonging to party lists to
be elected nationally. It is likely that each party will have on this list
individuals who it expects to nominate as ministers. It is expected that these
members will take a less local stand on issues and will initiate debates on more
national issues.
It is hard, however, to
imagine a total turnover in the membership of parliament, particularly that
section of 400 that will be elected from local constituencies. The current
politicians have deep social roots in the Thai countryside, and a mere rewriting
of rules cannot be expected suddenly to overcome that fact.
Nonetheless, the crisis
into which the country has fallen may change the behaviour of the politicians.
After all, that these much maligned individuals allowed the passage of a
constitution that most of them regarded as being directly adverse to their
interests, but which they had persuaded themselves is in the public interest,
speaks much for their sense of patriotism.
The new parliament and
the new government, assuming that it will acquire a spark of concern for the
national interest which has been so missing in our national life, will have some
major reform tasks:
(1)
Reform
of the Bank of Thailand, together with the assembly of machinery for monetary
policy for, with a flexible exchange rate, the task of formulating it is no
longer as trivial as it was in the past.
(2)
Reform
of the system of financial supervision and regulation, together with (possible)
an introduction of an explicit deposit insurance scheme.
(3)
Reform
of the machinery for fiscal policy formulation and the establishment of a
mechanism to link with monetary policy.
In the design of these
reforms, a clear relationship between the policy level and the technical level
has to be mapped out. I have purposely used the word "technical"
rather than the more overpowering "technocratic", because the
country's political evolution has to be recognised.
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