“The Bank of Thailand bought about $8 billion during the first half of the year to help stem the gains in the baht, according to deputy governor Atchana Waiquamdee.
The number was derived from “the change in our foreign- exchange reserves”, Dr Atchana said yesterday.
The central bank spent about $18 billion last year to smooth the baht’s 15% gain against the dollar, she added.
“We can’t fix the currency like we fix other products,” she said. “There is $1.5 trillion flowing in the world and we don’t know how much of it will flow into Thailand. We don’t know how much the cost will be.“
Comment : the deputy governor forgot one important item of the equation : the value of what BOT has bought.
First, BOT is buying USD (to intervene on forex markets and curb the increase of THB), but then, that’s the secondary effect, the BOT will have accounting losses (in THB, read here)…
Difficult however to blame the BOT… Actually, many central banks in the world are playing the same very dangerous game… On a much broader scale.
Last thing : it’s official now. BOT does intervene on the currency market. Every time, they try -clumsily- to deny it… 
1 Response to “Currency : expensive… interventions from the BOT”