Can The Baht Strengthen Further?

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whitedesire
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Re: Can The Baht Strengthen Further?

Post by whitedesire »

Its absolutely outrageous at the strength of the baht, although not entirely their fault, Brexit has caused a weakening of sterling as we know, Malaysia is still very good for their currency, still well over 5 to the UK pound. Although it must be expensive for Malaysians to go to Thailand these days.

In the short term, its not going to get any better, long term sterling might strengthen but so probably will the Thai baht.

If Richard Branson's predictions come true, sterling will take another bash of a 25% reduction , that would mean 27-28 baht to the pound. It will kill off tourism to Thailand well and truly - who ever thought eh. Thailand make it really difficult for retiring etc these days, coupled with the strong baht, people will look at alternatives, like Cambodia, where it is easy to retire, i.e. pay £300 per year for a retirement visa or something like that. Malaysia is also another option.
Jun

Re: Can The Baht Strengthen Further?

Post by Jun »

I've increased the length of time in SE Asia to several months a year now.
For Thailand, I just calculate a budget in baht, based on previous trip expenditure in baht and assign an ever increasing sum of pounds to cover it.
The same in USD for Cambodia, LAK for Laos and so on.

The key to making this work is not having all my assets invested in GBP, but diversifying them. Obviously with a high Asian bias, to increase correlation with my spending.

I also don't see how the strength of the baht can be considered outrageous. A lot of stuff is still cheap in Thailand and the run a huge balance of payments surplus, with a growing economy. So the evidence is Thailand is competitive at the current exchange rates.
Meanwhile Britain is running trade deficits and piling on debt, suggesting we are struggling to compete with even the reduced exchange rate.
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