The portents of a consumer-led recovery in Thailand have been very obvious over the past month. Today a report showed that new credit card applications experienced the best growth for several years last month. Add to that - new car sales are up, the stock market has been one of the most impressive in Asia and indeed the world for the first half of 2002, and retail sales are up. Tourism continues to bring in much needed foreign exchange and the Baht is on the way up again.

In fact the spending splurge has surprised many economy watchers, causing some to express concern while Thailand's bad debt problem is far from resolved, it's police force have just been rated as one of the most corrupt worldwide, and Thailand's global competiveness as rated by the World Competitiveness Index took another dive recently.