, Columnist
Cheers! The Thai Consumer's Back
Asia's best-performing stock market this year has been highlighting the change in sentiment for some time.
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For three years, Thai consumers sat at home and nursed a debt hangover. That they're starting to go shopping again for things like secondhand bikes, restaurant meals and energy drinks is both encouraging and just as clearly visible in company earnings and stock prices as in Monday's GDP announcement.
Take Group Lease. The Bangkok-based motorcycle financier earned a record 256.5 million baht ($7.4 million) in the second quarter. While a lot of that profit growth came from smaller markets such as Cambodia and Laos, the company's Thai customers also paid their installments more regularly, leading to a 26 percent reduction in the company's allowance for bad debt from a year earlier.