At the \u201cLife Fest 40+: Better to Know Early\u201d event held at CentralWorld in Bangkok, Surapol Opasatien, Chief Executive Officer of the National Credit Bureau, warned that Thailand\u2019s economy is entering a downturn, with household debt emerging as a critical risk factor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without immediate intervention, the economy could expand by less than 1% \u2014 or not at all \u2014 in the final quarter of 2025, despite the usual year-end spending boost.<\/p>\n
Surapol noted that government stimulus measures such as Khon La Khrueng (Let\u2019s Go Halves) remain crucial. The Bank of Thailand recently projected only 1.6% GDP growth for 2026, and if companies continue to grow by no more than 2%, questions may arise about potential layoffs.<\/p>\n
He added that Thailand\u2019s financial crisis began during the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused widespread income loss between 2020 and 2023 \u2014 especially among 10 million self-employed workers. According to central bank data, it could take up to four to five years for their earnings to recover to pre-pandemic levels.<\/p>\n
Currently, Thais are facing shrinking incomes, rising expenses, and escalating debt. Over the past three years, average income has grown by only 3%, while household spending \u2014 including debt repayment \u2014 has risen by 5%, creating a widening financial imbalance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the \u201cLife Fest 40+: Better to Know Early\u201d event held at CentralWorld in Bangkok, Surapol Opasatien, Chief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,2825,67146,1700,167376,167375,47884,28262,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-511806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-debt","10":"tag-debt-crisis","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-labourers","13":"tag-office-workers","14":"tag-quality-of-life","15":"tag-thais","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115400634978071220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}