A flourishing economy tops Thais’ wish list for 2023 and the Year of the Rabbit, according to an opinion survey by Bangkok University, or Bangkok Poll.
The poll was conducted from Dec 6-9 using a simple random sampling method in telephone interviews with 1,141 respondents nationwide of mixed age groups and levels of education.
Asked what they wanted as a New Year wish, 57.4% of respondents said they wanted the country’s economy to flourish throughout the year. Second on the wish list with 48.1% was good health, while 46.9% of respondents wanted to see peace, love and unity among people in the country, 41.9% wished Thailand to be a Covid-free, and 35.9% wanted commodity prices and the cost of living to be not to be high.
Other wishes were complete eradication of illicit drugs (34.4%), lower fuel prices (30.9%), no repeats of serious communicable diseases like Covid-19 (24.5%), a revived tourism economy with many foreign arrivals (24.4%), and for people to get richer (19.9%)
Respondents were also asked how they perceived the outlook for the economy, communicable diseases and people’s livelihoods in 2023 when compared with the previous year. Fifty-two percent viewed that the situation would be better than before, 32.8% said it would be as the same as the previous year and 15.2% said conditions would get worse.