Thailand's GDP grows 3.2% in 3Q16

But multiple headwinds loom for 4Q16.

Thailand's 3Q16 GDP grew 3.2%, vs 3.5% in the previous quarter. After seasonal adjustments, 3Q16 GDP expanded by 0.6% from 2Q16. In the first nine months, the Thai economy registered an average of 3.3% growth.

Maybank KimEng notes that this is below Bloomberg's expectation of 3.4%. However, on a YTD basis, it is still in line with BOT and NESDB’s expectation of 3.2%.

GDP growth in 3Q16 was underpinned by rising private consumption, public spending as well as a rise in the tourism sector.

Private consumption grew by 3.5% YoY in 3Q16, continuing momentum from 2Q16 of 3.8%. Meanwhile, public spending grew by 6.3% in 3Q16. However, the growth was lower vs the 11.9% in 2Q16. Finally, the services sector showed a strong growth of 14.7% in 3Q16, higher than growth of 12.6% in 2Q16.

Another key positive was that the agricultural sector saw growth rebounding to +0.9% YoY in 3Q16 vs - 1.2% in 2Q16 (after seven consecutive quarters of decline).

Looking ahead, Maybank KimEng sees multiple headwinds emerging that can affect 4Q16 and have a high risk of spilling into 1Q17, partly because of the dampening effect caused by the mourning on many economic activities; weaker tourism due to crack down of zero dollar tours and weak prices in a number of crops in the current harvest season.

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