Companies under the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) are calling on the Bank of Thailand (BoT) to better regulate commercial banks' interest rates as increasing financial costs are threatening to slow investment.
Some 80% of 230 executives recently surveyed by the FTI want the central bank to come up with new measures to set an appropriate difference between loan and deposit interest rates.
Only 20% agreed to have these two interest rates determined by the market.
The gap between bank lending and savings rates in Thailand is high, increasing financial costs for manufacturers, which will eventually lead to a delay in business expansion, said Montri Mahaplerkpong, vice-chairman of the FTI.
Last year the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) raised the benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 2.5%, the highest level in a decade.
Though key state-owned banks announced they would freeze loan rates to avoid burdening lenders, private banks hiked both loan and deposit rates in response.
The regulator said last month the policy rate is appropriate for economic recovery.
Respondents were worried about the BoT maintaining the 2.5% rate for a long time because of higher financial costs, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the majority of Thai entrepreneurs, said Mr Montri.
"They are still struggling to recover from the impact of the pandemic, adjusting to higher production costs last year," he said.
When asked how a prolonged elevated policy rate would affect industries, respondents voted for delayed investment plans (67.8%), followed by liquidity shortages affecting debt payment abilities (61.3%), and lowering consumer purchasing power based on more cautious spending (60.4%), according to the pollster.