on this question of gdp growing less than one percent this year which you mentioned recently so it looks like our argue i should say set to revise down your forecast 2021 i believe was a 0.7 increase in gdp 3.9 percent for 2022. are you going to at the at the next meeting in fact that's next week consider uh putting out an even even lower forecast uh we'll be putting out our next forecast on december 22nd with our next monetary policy report um so it would not be appropriate for me to comment on specific numbers i i can't say this that uh directionally actually um we think 2021 um given that the third quarter lockdown uh didn't have as severe an impact as we had uh expected that there is probably some upside to the uh 0.7 figure that we initially put out for this year uh next year the the the the figure that we have out there right now is um was 3.9 but again there's a lot of uncertainty with omicron and the impact on tourism so that that remains to be saved well speaking of the impact on tourism one of your senior directors said that thailand may not be able to meet his tourism target for this year and next uh for 2022 6 million foreign arrivals expected 200 000 this year how far do you think that could fall short and what is that going to mean for the path of policy this year actually um the numbers have been coming in fairly fairly fairly good um and we've already hit 200 000 uh tours which is a very very low number because remember we were before the pandemic we were hitting uh 40 million tours a year so 200 000 is basically rounding error but this year so far we expect to hit 200 000 already um the issue is really on the outlook for for next year omicron raises a lot of uncertainty um but right now our baseline expectation and forecast is that it will not hit tourism um the forecast that we have for next year which is six million uh as much as as we might have otherwise been worried about uh given the spread of the of the new variant because we had a very very gradual recovery in tourism in our baseline forecast so you know we expect uh january and what not to be off but uh given that the numbers were very very low to begin with um the overall impact in terms of headline numbers might not be that large but yeah if there's another variant that comes in at the end of next year during our high season and we understand there's always that possibility and a lot of letters left in the group exactly then then there will be a significant downside to our our forecast for next year but as it stands not so much well governor you know one thing we do know is going to happen this week is the federal reserve is going to meet it's expected to speed up the pace of the taper and it may signal a speed up of rate hikes maybe even more in the next couple of years the dollar's been strengthening recently if it continues to strengthen and the bot weakens then do you have to look at steps like even eventually something towards tighter policy raising rates um most of our rate trajectory will be dictated by domestic considerations um you know things that happen on on our with our inflation because you have in place a flexible inflation targeting framework right now that inflation is is not that much of an issue because it's still trending towards um the lower end of our inflation targeted targeting ranges is one to three percent um looking at things that very importantly now about the robustness of our growth recovery and lastly considerations if they arise of financial stability it will be less dictated by what happens with what hap in terms of fed responses and and and earlier than expected tapering we're a country that is not that vulnerable to um more rapid tapering by the fed are there a bunch of reasons for that first off is that our external buffers are very strong we have very high levels of reserves low levels of external debt um but also the transmission effect from say a spike in bond yields from overseas to the domestic bond market and to the real economy is is relatively muted and there are a bunch of reasons for that well and of course though the bot is definitely something that you you watch very closely and it can have a big impact on your economy and right now we've got it looks like policy changes in the us and china are moving in the opposite direction uh this could create i guess conflicting forces for the bot and how you know is that something you're watching very closely and what could it mean for steps you take yeah obviously we have to follow these things very closely exchange rate is something is a variable that impacts the economy very widely we're very open economy very dependent upon exports and tourism that said the um the impact of the fed moves and by the pboc are are very different in terms of how they play out in an economy like thailand the fed fed moves by the fed given the dominant role of dollar have big financial market spillovers and as i mentioned for us uh relative to perhaps other economies that impact is is perhaps a little less worrisome for the reasons that i cited with china it's a bit of a different story uh china the impact isn't so much on financial markets that worries us it's the impact on in terms of growth so uh the spillovers that matter most for from chinese central bank actions are in terms of what happens with chinese growth and the impact that we'll have on the economy goblin and thailand that said uh the most important easing that matters would matter most to us from china would be easing in terms of their outbound tourists much more than easing by any easing by the pboc governor do negative real rates impact the way you're thinking if so how do they play out in terms of policy formulation yeah um we the one area where we had a fair bit of financial shall we say pockets of financial um instability was was in household debt uh going into the going into the crisis so um the fact that that um real rates have uh well rates have been low and rail rates have have been negative for quite some time um in a normal situation would have uh cost us to have concerns about the build-up of household debt because that's already increased from about 80 of gdp to about 90 of gdp last hole so so that's something obviously that we we're paying attention to but again um that has to be put in terms of the overall context of the recovery and in terms of rate decisions i mentioned will be at this point given our flexible inflation targeting framework paying more attention and more closely attention to uh making sure that the recovery is is intact continues um that inflation remains within our with our range and then uh looking for uh signs of of widening or worries some financial instability right and governor i guess to follow up on on rishi's question david here by the way i mean who knows really where inflation is going to go and who knows really how long your your interest rates are going to remain negative how would you describe demand for loans given that obviously your benchmark rate is i mean virtually at zero really and to your earlier point on what you want and need to see before you move on rates give us a a sense of of domestic demand sure um well loan growth is a result of both demand and supply right so um but but all told i would say that that we have been uh i think um quite encouraged by uh the credit growth in the system um our first priority heading into one of the one of our first priorities on the monitoring credit side heading into the crisis trying to make sure the bank sector played its credit intermediation role and acted as a shock absorber not a shock amplifier and so normally when we see gdb contracting last year we had a contraction of over six percent of gdp and this year lackluster growth that we mentioned we would have expected normally right that that credit growth should have contracted so we were quite happy that we actually saw credit growth continue to grow to expand and expand at a rate uh actually higher than we saw in in neighboring countries credit growth in thailand now overall system-wide is growing at about four or five percent year a year so that's higher than we that you see elsewhere in the region and um so so that's been quite encouraging um the concern with us is that it it isn't necessarily going where we would like it to go a lot of that credit growth is concentrated in the corporate sector in the household sector which is why we had to put in more directed credit measures targeted towards the sme sector trying to put in place credit guarantees to address increasing risk appetite of what law so you have said that you don't expect to get back to pre-pandemic levels in the economy until i believe the first quarter of 2023 when do you expect jobs to get back to pre-pandemic levels and and is this tied very closely to maintaining stimulus not only from the bank of thailand but also on the fiscal side yeah it's a great question uh first first first response kathleen is that um when we say it gets back to pre-pandemic levels that's in terms of the headline gdp numbers in terms of levels if you ask people say by the first quarter 2003 we expect gdp to go back to that level whether they will feel like things are back to normal i think the short answer for most people will be no and that again is because the income and employment will still be quite a bit a ways off from from what it was pre-prices that's picture is going to be driven largely not by the headline gdp numbers but the employment income picture will be doing much more what happens with tourism because tourism has such a large employment and income footprint in in the economy um tourism vote directly and directly accounts for close to about a fifth of our employment so until we get uh our headline tourism numbers back to roughly where they were um prior to the pandemic which is probably not anytime soon because i said we're still a long way from the 40 million that we saw pre-coveted pre-covet that that full uh employment and income figure is not likely to uh come back to to where it was before so is it fair to say uh you know you've had what you've gone through 12 meetings with unchanged policy is it fair to say that when you do move you expect that to be a move to start removing stimulus start raising rates and what would be what would be the key indicator of yes it's time to look in that direction yeah um no surprises i think we have again uh a flexible inflation targeting framework in place so the kinds of things that would be looked at will be the usual uh trinity of factors uh growth inflation and uh financial stability um we have a again it's not a mechanical approach so um the priorities of of those three factors will will adjust right now i think we've been fairly clear in our embassy statements and in the monetary policy report uh the priority is on ensuring that the growth trajectory is is is reasonably robust and that the recovery remains intact so that's something that we'll be paying a lot of attention to so looking at risks um to the growth outlook that will be uh uh one of the important considerations again how omicron and other uh uh right the rest of the pandemic plays out inflation again something we'll be keeping a very close eye on like i said right now um it isn't a top of mind concern because it's still within our target range and and towards the bottom end of our target range but one thing we're looking at closely is global spillovers from the inflation pickup that we see happening across the globe uh that said again um pass-throughs in thailand on inflation have tended to be somewhat limited so that again uh suggests that that we don't need to um you know have a very strong knee-jerk reaction to to what what happens on the on the global inflation front and see really how it plays out domestically in the economy um uh with what happens with local wages and local prices and whatnot and and lastly again to keep an open eye a close eye on on on any signs of financial stability so those would be the three things that we would pay most attention to