More effort needed on sufficiency economy

More effort needed on sufficiency economy

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's trip to New York to attend the United Nations summit generated a great deal of attention among Thais, including those in the United States. Some organised a protest near the United Nations headquarters while many more showed up to express their support. A large number who could not go to New York gathered in Los Angeles to air their views.

As so much attention was focused on his meetings with other leaders and the interpretations of those leaders' stances toward him as an unelected head of government, little was paid to the main agenda of the summit: finding ways to reach sustainable development, set out in the form of 17 goals to be achieved in the next 15 years.

As a contribution toward that end, Gen Prayut proposed the world community use the sufficiency economy to underpin its policies.

There was no report whether any delegations to the summit were interested in asking questions about the sufficiency economy or how Thailand has used it.

They might as well not ask, for there was no evidence indicating the Thai delegation has a deep understanding of the sufficiency economy.

In fact, successive Thai governments have failed to adopt it as a way to underpin Thailand's development policies in any meaningful way.

It is puzzling why the prime minister would recommend the sufficiency economy to the world community while the government under his leadership has not shown a full commitment to it.

Granted, since taking power last year, the government has shown signs it would do something about the morality component of the sufficiency economy (the other components being knowledge, reason, protection from risk, and moderation) by tackling the rampant corruption that has been plaguing Thailand.

It has sent troops to knock down shops and tourist facilities that encroached on public beaches and to halt construction of homes and resorts in forest reserves and national parks.

After a strong start, however, efforts on this front seem to have slowed, raising questions whether the government has run into its own people as well as big-money violators.

Some policies also show signs of moving in the opposite direction.

Take, for example, the populist-leaning transfer of 5 million baht to each of the over 7,000 tambons (sub-districts), a big part of the recently launched economic stimulus programme.

Many fear a substantial share of the money is likely to end up in the pockets of corrupt officials and crooks. Clear signs of this have emerged in the form of protests by village headmen in various parts of the country.

As to the stimulus programme itself, most measures are aimed at boosting expenditure, including for unneeded consumption.

Such a programme, of course, is one of the main instruments of the mainstream economic system, which according to Joseph Stiglitz in his book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, has already failed.

Boosting unneeded consumption is also contrary to the moderation principle, a component of the sufficiency economy that helps make mainstream economics suitable for a world that is constrained by dwindling resources and a rising population.

Moderation is closely associated with the middle-path principle. Both are central to the teachings of Buddha and Aristotle, which Jeffrey Sachs has proposed in his book, The Price of Civilisation: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity, as the solution to our problems.

This can be considered as equivalent to amending the free-market economic system with the moderation principle to make the free market an appropriate tool for achieving sustainable development.

Although adopting sufficiency economy ideas is the right path towards sustainability, much more work needs to be done because, as Sachs points out, there is nothing simple about moderation, and there are currently no practical guidelines as to how it should be applied.

For this reason, I have suggested to successive Thai leaders that, if they are serious about using the sufficiency economy as they have often said, they should set out to work on such guidelines, starting with the tax system.

So far the suggestion has fallen on deaf ears, indicating the government's words continue to be empty.

This state of affairs has damaged the credibility of Thai leaders. However, that is of little consequence compared to the potential harm that it may do to the reputation of the synthesiser of economic ideas who came up with the sufficiency economy philosophy -- His Majesty the King -- and to the chances of Thailand and the world community adopting it as a means to underpin development policies.

All is not lost, however, if the prime minister manages to reduce the use of outdated economic instruments that his economic team has been pushing, and starts working on guidelines as to how to apply the moderation principle in economic policies, and faithfully use them once they become available.


Sawai Boonma has worked as a development economist for more than two decades. He can be reached at sboonma@msn.com.

Sawai Boonma

Writer

Former Senior Country Economist at the World Bank and now a freelance writer.

Email : sboonma@msn.com

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