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PRESS RELEASE: PRESS/TPRB/291

TRADE POLICY REVIEW:

Strong growth, but restoring investor confidence is a key challenge

By and large, Thailand's economic fundamentals remain good. Since its previous Trade Policy Review in 2003, despite a series of difficult circumstances, Thailand's real GDP has grown at an average annual rate of 5.7%, largely due to strong growth in exports and domestic consumption, according to a WTO Secretariat report on the trade policies and practices of Thailand. Nevertheless, a confluence of factors, including increasingly constrained production capacity, has led to a recent slowdown in real GDP growth.

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The report notes that a key challenge for Thailand’s future economic performance is the Government’s ability to restore private investor confidence and to proceed with pending structural reforms, including stalled privatizations, that would help improve the country’s competitiveness.

Further trade openness would support Thailand's development plans. To raise the predictability of the trade regime, the report underlines inter alia the need for Thailand to expand its tariff bindings and to simplify its relatively complex tariff regime. The Services sector, which makes up a large part of the Thai economy, has benefited so far from liberalization but would grow further if multilateral commitments under the GATS were expanded, according to the report.

The WTO Secretariat report, along with a policy statement by the Government of Thailand, will be the basis for the fifth TPR of Thailand by the Trade Policy Review Body of the WTO on 26 and 28 of November 2007.

The WTO report, along with a policy statement by the Government, will be the basis for the Trade Policy Review (TPR) by the Trade Policy Review Body of the WTO.

The following documents are available in MS Word format.

• Secretariat report
  > Contents and summary observations
  > Economic environment
  > Trade and investment regimes
  > Trade policies and practices by measure
  > Trade policies by sector
  > Appendix tables
    
• Government report
    

Note  back to top

Trade Policy Reviews are an exercise, mandated in the WTO agreements, in which member countries’ trade and related policies are examined and evaluated at regular intervals. Significant developments that may have an impact on the global trading system are also monitored. For each review, two documents are prepared: a policy statement by the government of the member under review, and a detailed report written independently by the WTO Secretariat. These two documents are then discussed by the WTO’s full membership in the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB). These documents and the proceedings of the TPRB’s meetings are published shortly afterwards.

Print copies of previous TPR publications are available for sale from the WTO Secretariat, Centre William Rappard, 154 rue de Lausanne, 1211 Genève 21 and through the on-line bookshop.

The TPR publications are also available from our co-publisher Bernan Press, 4611-F Assembly Drive, Lanham, MD 20706-4391, United States.

Schedule of forthcoming reviews  back to top

Turkey: 10 and 12 of December 2007
Pakistan: 16 and 18 of January 2008
Ghana: 28 and 30 of January 2008

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