More bullish seen for Thai stock market in 2018

BANGKOK, November 20 (TNA) - The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) is likely to become more bullish in 2018, thanks to the recovering national economy. SET President Kesara Manchusree told journalists of the positive prospect of the Thai stock market on Monday when she foresaw that the Thai economy should further grow by over 4 per cent year-on-year in 2018. Kesara pointed out that Thailand's gross domestic product (GDP) growth up to about 4.3 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of this year, reported by the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) recently, and has been then projected, by the government's think tank, to now grow by 3.9 per cent year-on-year on average in 2017 should be the grounded evidence that the national economy has already bottomed out and kept recovering. Kesara explained that a trend of the expanding national economy normally supports the Thai bourse to become more bullish to welcome the national economic growth in advance and the SET index has, thus, been rising over the past months. The SET president assessed, meanwhile, that business performances of listed firms on the Thai stock market should remain sound generally this year and further improve next year. The SET chief cautioned, however, that the strengthening Thai baht, at about 33.80 baht a US dollar now, should be a risk factor for Thai exports and national economic growth, suggesting that local traders and exporters add values to their products through improved quality and packaging to deal with the risk factor. (TNA)