| Business Confidence in the 3rd quarter down due to anxiety over floods |
| Due to on-going floods in many areas, rising wages, increasing commodity and raw material prices, confidence of Business loans customers in the 3rd quarter of 2011 was found to decrease after rising up a bit in the previous one. Meanwhile, exporters were worried about an impact from the world’s economy. Ms. Sompis Charoenkiatikul, Senior Executive Vice President, Managing Director, Risk Management and Compliance Group, Krung Thai Bank PCL. discloses about the results of Krung Thai Business Index (KTBI) preparation that measures entrepeneurs’ confidence nationwide of the 3rd quarter, that it fells to 53.52 from 53.94 in the last quarter. The KTBI did not show the significant decrease since it was conducted between mid-September to early October when the floods situation had not been severe and industrial estates had not been afflicted. “We anticipate that KTBI will continuously fall since entrepreneurs-especially automobile, computer, and electronic appliance manufacturers- must face supply chain issue and scarcity of raw materials. Moreover, our country’s GDP will dwindle by not less than 1 percent from the former expectation.” Ms. Sompis Charoenkiatikul further states that the Bank has released the measures to help corporate and retail customers through freezing repayment of principle and interest for 6 months while SME customers will be offered loans at an interest rate of 0% with grace period of three months. Besides, the Bank has already adjusted the old seven measures by extending the special loan with low interest rate for 3 months and granting borrowers to defer their repayment by up to 7 years.
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| Corporate Branding & Communications Department October 26, 2011 |
