The European Central Bank’s decision to cut its benchmark interest rate by 10 basis points to 0.05 per cent will have no direct impact on the Thai economy, says the Bank of Thailand, which is currently paying more attention to developments at home than to external factors.

The central bank is maintaining its projection that the government account balance will be in surplus this year, although a slight deficit in the account balance in the future might be a positive thing if the deficit were caused by an increase in public investment and not by a rise in the level of imported energy.

Meanwhile, in other news, the BOT has decided to delete information on around 600,000 debtors with non-performing loans from the National Credit Bureau (NCB) system, to give them a fresh start and encourage them to get back into the formal loan system rather than turning to sources of finance outside the system.

Most of the debtors have low-level loans and have been on the blacklist since the 1997 financial crisis. All of them will still have to pay back their loans and their names have only been taken off the credit bureau list to lower the barriers keeping them from gaining access to finance.

Bangkok Post 6/9/2014