While a relatively large increase was expected (well, at least by those with a reasonable grasp of international economics, foreign exchange markets, interest rate differentials and an interest in the Thailand economy) this was larger than I expected.
The main reason for the improvement in the international value of THB in November, although it may appear to be counterintuitive, was the improvement in US economic data in recent months (rather than economic data in Thailand).
The interest rate increase of 0.25% announced by the BoT at noon yesterday (30th November) had very little, if any, impact of the November NEER as the increase had been expected since the end of September.
The chart below is of the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate of the THB since January 1994.
It is notable how the seemingly inexorable rise of the THB since mid 2005 was not only halted but reversed by the two black swan events of Covid and Ukraine.
- Nominal Effective Exchange Rate from January 1994 to November 2022
Source BoT: https://www.bot.or.th/English/Statistic ... dices.aspx
Notes:
My preferred measure for the international value of THB is the Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER).
Unfortunately the November data for REER lags that of NEER by a month.
However, as the differences between the two are relatively small the NEER data does provide a good indication of what can be expected from the REER data.
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