Bloomberg reports today that:
Thailand’s five-week old government signaled it wants the nation’s central bank to stop raising interest rates as Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra seeks to stoke growth in Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy.
“I did not agree with high interest rates to handle inflation if it’s not demand-pull inflation,” Deputy Prime Minister Kittiratt Na-Ranong said in an interview in Bangkok today. Yingluck’s administration has pledged to almost double the minimum wage in parts of the country and buy rice from farmers at above-market rates after winning the July 3 election with support from lower-income voters.