Thailand GDP to jump to 2.8%

But the country has to brace for waves of external demand woes with the lacklustre global economic outlook.

According to DBS, headline GDP growth is expected to reach 2.8% YoY in 2Q. This will take growth in the first half of this year to 1.5%. Our full year growth forecast of 5.5% remains unchanged for 2012. Sequentially, GDP growth will run at a healthy clip of 1.8% QoQ sa. Notably, much of the V-shape recovery since the floods of 2011 has already played out. The value of production index has been hovering near the pre-flood levels since March.

Here's more from DBS:

Meanwhile, capacity utilization remains elevated by historical standards, but we suspect that payback for the drop in production in 4Q last year will be over in the coming few months. Supply side constraints will no longer be the main determinant behind output growth. Instead, demand will become the primary determinant of economic growth.

Going forward, the lackluster global economic outlook does not bode well for external demand. Pent up demand is currently helping to drive exports for electronic manufactures and vehicles. But with final demand unlikely to recover sharply, the pace of export growth is set to slow.

The picture for agriculture exports is mixed. In the early months of this year, the quantity of rice exports fell sharply as the government implemented the price pledging scheme for rice. However, the government has already accumulated a significant stockpile of rice and it is possible that the excess grain will be exported.

Growth in the coming quarters will hinge heavily on domestic demand, in particular, investment. Private investment has rebounded sharply since the trough in December last year with imports of capital goods increasing significantly. This momentum looks likely to spill over into 3Q amid continued post-flood reconstruction.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia