As the economy continues to stagnate, speculation is getting more intense as to when the prime minister will replace some - or perhaps all - ministers in charge of the economy. Changing personnel may pacify the critics, but it is unlikely to change anything for the better. Both external and internal factors are working against any possibility of achieving robust growth in the near future.
Externally, major trading partners are not expected to achieve growth rates similar to those of the period before the onset of the recession in 2008.
Many Thais, as usual, have blamed international politics for putting the country in a bad light. Thankfully, the Thai leadership does not seem to take that view, for doing so would be irresponsible.
Stagnated exports of goods and services are exacerbated by weak domestic demand, resulting from such factors as slow implementation of public investment projects, high household debt, worsening income and wealth inequality, and a struggling agricultural sector that has come under even more pressure with the recent floods and drought.
Slow implementation of public investment projects may be transitional as the government has re-examined many projects to get rid of the graft that tends to accompany them.
This is a price worth paying if the government were to be able to find ways to lower the level of graft significantly. Other factors are more structural, but many issues can be addressed concurrently if the prime minister is serious about alleviating the plight of the 4 million farming families. To do this, he needs to appoint people who understand and believe in what he wishes to do, which the current ministers are not interested in, or don't know how to implement.
New ministers, accompanied perhaps by reshuffling key civil servants, will need to come up with what needs to be done, but they will do no worse by starting with these four areas.
Household debt, which has been a major drag on the economy, needs to be tackled. Some of the 400 billion baht owed by farming families will need to be written off and the rest restructured with longer repayment periods.
The government will have to shoulder some of the burden but it will be far less than the losses incurred in the populist rice-pledging scheme.
A futures market for agricultural commodities has now been set up in the country with links to other major futures markets. The government needs to find ways to take advantage of these facilities, which are beyond the reach of Thai farmers.
A land bank has been under consideration for some time now. It needs to be implemented urgently.
Water management, which has been woefully inadequate, needs to shift from focusing on big-budget dams and major irrigation schemes to building small on-farm ponds to store rain water. The push to revive the environmentally damaging Mae Wong dam in Nakhon Sawan should be halted. Instead, funds should be allocated to constructing on-farm ponds on land not currently served by irrigation schemes.
Such ponds have been effective in combatting water shortages in other parts of the world and some Thai landowners have launched small schemes on their own. Institutions such as the Institute of Sufficiency Economy of Rajanagarindra Rajabhat University and The Agri-nature Foundation have intimate knowledge of these schemes. The government should engage such institutions that will help speed up the work.
Even with commitment to undertake the necessary changes, development history indicates the growth of a middle-income country such as Thailand will continue to be lower than what had been achieved when the country was in a lower stage of development.
Newly appointed ministers may, therefore, rush to show their achievements by proposing quick-fix populist programmes. The prime minister will need to stop the kinds of proposals which will serve only to make things worse in the long run.
Sawai Boonma has worked as a development economist for more than two decades. He can be reached at sboonma@msn.com.