[In This Economy] How I envy the Thais

Before classes start again at the University of the Philippines on August 20, I had a chance to insert a quick trip to Bangkok with friends.

The last time I was there was in 2018, and I’ve forgotten how modern Thailand is compared to the Philippines.

Sure, Don Mueang Airport’s a little bit old compared to our own NAIA Terminal 3, but it was relatively painless going from there to our place by Grab. We didn’t get stuck in traffic, as one would experience by default coming from any of the NAIA airports. And of course, Bangkok’s main airport, Suvarnabhumi, is leagues above our own NAIA.

Food is cheap. A large Americano, for example, sets you back by 70 baht (about P113). A sizeable bowl of chicken noodle soup costs 45 baht (P73). Actually, this is a recurring thought whenever you get to visit neighboring Asian neighbors: food is so expensive in the Philippines!

My morning jogs also reminded me of how decent Bangkok’s public infrastructure is. Major roads are lined with wide sidewalks and trees, safe enough for a jog — something that is simply absent along EDSA. Nearby rivers and creeks are clean and don’t smell foul. Buses arrive promptly at designated waiting sheds. The subway stations are neatly integrated along sidewalks, while above-ground MRT stations seamlessly lead to big malls. Several subway lines crisscross one another, in contrast to the embarrassingly few LRT and MRT lines in Manila.

We bumped into Friday night traffic jams, but they were not as bad as the traffic jams along, say, EDSA. If ever cars stop, they don’t do that for too long.

The Chao Phraya River is a major transportation hub that allows locals and tourists to avoid road traffic. Some piers along the river lead straight to big hotels and malls. 

There’s a lot of economic activity. Malls and food courts are jam-packed with locals and tourists. There are even luxury cars like Rolls-Royces and Teslas being sold inside major malls. 

Despite the hustle and bustle of it all, there are many quiet corners that allow moments of reflection. Roofed spirit houses intersperse the city, laden with garlands of yellow flowers and food offerings. The Museum of Contemporary Art is another nice respite from city life.

Upper-middle-income country

This is not to idealize Thailand as the perfect Southeast Asian country. They have their own political and social troubles, including streaks of military coups and a fast-aging population. My observations are also limited to Bangkok, which is not at all representative of other parts of Thailand, and where inequality is most acute.

But for me, Thailand showcases the level of economic development and prosperity that the Philippines could have enjoyed decades ago — if only we had not fallen behind our ASEAN peers.

A few days ago, I watched a documentary on YouTube on Thailand’s fast-aging population. One person lamented: “Economically speaking, we’re an upper-middle-income country, but we’ve been caught in this trap for quite a long time now. This has hindered our economic development. We haven’t been able to transition into a developed, high-income country just yet.”

Figure 1 below shows that Thailand was considered an upper-middle-income country only in 2008. That’s just 16 years ago. By contrast, the Philippines has been considered a lower-middle income country since the World Bank began its classification system in 1989. We’ve been trapped in that category for 35 years now! It’s taking us forever to transition to an income category where Thailand is now. 

Figure 1.

To be sure, Figure 1 also shows that the Philippines is on the verge of crossing the threshold and becoming an upper-middle-income country itself — and the government’s economic managers always brag about this tantalizing prospect.

But last year, Indonesia beat us; they’re now officially an upper-middle-income country. And it looks like Vietnam will make the transition next, overtaking us in terms of per-person incomes back in 2020. 

So if you hear from the government that we’re about to be an upper-middle-income country, know that this doesn’t remove the fact that we’ve been overtaken by many of our Asian peers. We’re now in the bottom 4 in ASEAN; only Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Myanmar are poorer than us.

Meanwhile, Figure 2 shows that the Philippines was, in fact, richer than Thailand until 1983. But in 1984, as the Philippine economy crumbled under the Marcos dictatorship, Thailand overtook us.

Figure 2.

Thailand’s path to relative prosperity manifested in other ways. In my book, False Nostalgia, I showed that in the 1980s, life expectancy increased and infant mortality declined in Thailand, but these trends faltered in the Philippines around the same time (that is, during the Marcosian economic crisis).

Today, the Philippines is about as prosperous as Thailand was in the early 1990s. We’re a full three decades behind!

We don’t have space here to tackle all the reasons why Thailand is now richer than the Philippines. But suffice to say that some ingredients of success include years of investments in human and physical capital, a favorable business environment, and the promotion of manufacturing and exports.

How long will it take for the Philippines to reach Thailand’s current level of development? I can only hope I see that within my lifetime. – Rappler.com

JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor at the UP School of Economics and the author of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them. In 2024, he received The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award for economics. JC’s views are independent of his affiliations. Follow him on Twitter/X (@jcpunongbayan) and Usapang Econ Podcast.