Thailand 20260206

Mekong Memo Thailand Weekly: Business, politics, finance, trade & legal news.

Feb 06, 2026

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Headlines:

Three-Way Race, 90% Debt

Smart Money Flees the Doom Loop

Red Shirts Fade to Pink

What the Ballot Won’t Change

KKR Bets $5 Billion on Southeast Asia's Data Appetite

Ten Months Below Zero

Trillion-Baht Bridge Floats Back Into View

Thai Banks Give Expats the Cold Shoulder

G Codes for Ghost Kids

The Billion-Baht Barrier

Three-Way Race, 90% Debt

Thailand votes Sunday in a three-way race where household debt seems like it is going to matter more than ideology. The progressive People's Party is leading the polls at 34% to 36%, ahead of Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's Bhumjaithai at 19% to 23% and the Shinawatra family's Pheu Thai trailing at 16% to 22%. That's a reversal from 2023, when People's Party's predecessor Move Forward won the election handily, but couldn't form a government, got dissolved by court order, and saw Anutin outmaneuver everyone to grab the top job last September. This time the military-appointed Senate can't block the winner from becoming PM, but an outright majority looks unlikely, meaning coalition math will decide who will be running the country next. The People's Party is pitching a 100-day economic plan and institutional reforms. Bhumjaithai is playing the security card after the border issues with Cambodia. Pheu Thai is fielding Yodchanan Wongsawat, a 46-year-old biomedical engineering professor and political novice who happens to be nephew to exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. The biggest issue isn't left versus right but Thailand's nearly 90% debt-to-GDP ratio, among Asia's highest. Whoever wins this one is going to inherit an economy where consumption is hamstrung and reforms keep getting delayed by the political crises.

Smart Money Flees the Doom Loop

Global investors are dumping Thai assets before the polls open, and the message is blunt: they don't care who wins. T Rowe Price has scaled back bond holdings, Allianz Global Investors sits underweight across the board, and Aberdeen is limiting exposure to defense stocks and exporters that don't touch the domestic economy. The Thai stock index was among the world's worst performers last year, and bonds have trailed most growing market peers. The problem isn't valuation - Thai equities look cheap by any (usual) metric. But as Christopher Leow at Principal Asset Management put it, "looking cheap is probably not enough." Investors don’t have confidence that the country's fourth leader in three years will be able to beat weak governance or overcome policy drift. Aberdeen's Nattanont Arunyakananda said that credible reforms and fiscal support are needed for confidence, warning that "any post-election bounce is likely to remain tactical rather than structural." Over the past three elections, the benchmark SET Index has gained an average of 3.3 percent in the one-month period after a vote, a modest consolation prize for sitting through recurring coups, court interventions, and political paralysis.

Red Shirts Fade to Pink

As mentioned in the first story, Pheu Thai is polling third, a fraction of the vote shares that once made the Shinawatra machine unstoppable. The party's founder, Thaksin, is serving a one-year sentence in the pokey for corruption. His daughter was thrown out as prime minister by court order last year. Now his nephew Yodchanan Wongsawat is the candidate - success would make him the family's fifth premier in 25 years. The previous four were all removed by coups or courts. Long-time supporters still show up, selling party T-shirts with Thaksin's face at campaign stops, but reformists have shifted to the People's Party instead. Political scientist Napon Jatusripitak thinks the party should be dead, but its ground network game remains strong. The party is now just winning enough seats to play spoiler, giving them opportunity to extract cabinet posts and policy concessions from whoever needs their numbers to govern.

What the Ballot Won't Change

Human Rights Watch and Article 19 released reports this week to pu Thailand's ongoing political repression on display again. The report find that more than 1,900 people are facing charges for political expression and at least 55 are still locked up, including human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, who is serving a sentence of more than 29 years. As voters head to polls to decide whether to replace the military-drafted 2017 constitution, the discussion of lese majeste reform has vanished from the campaigns. Prime Minister Anutin's government has rejected proposals of both lese majeste reform and amnesty, while continuing to deport refugees to persecution, including 40 Uyghur men to China and a Montagnard activist to Vietnam in 2025. The reports are as a reminder of what's not being debated.

Read more: News Fundsforngos (Human Rights Watch), Article19 (Shrinking space)

KKR Bets $5B on SEA Data Appetite

KKR and Singtel are buying the remaining 82% of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres for $5.1 billion, giving the entire operation a $10.9 billion valuation (including debt and committed projects), one of the biggest digital infrastructure deals in Southeast Asia. The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year and gives KKR a 75% stake and Singtel 25%. STT GDC runs 2.3 gigawatts of data center capacity in 12 markets from Singapore to London, built on the back of cloud computing and AI's endless hunger for processing muscle. The consortium first bought into the company in 2024 with $1.75 billion in preference shares and warrants. For Thailand, where STT GDC plans to finish its Bangkok 2 facility by year-end or early 2027, nothing is expected to change operationally.

Ten Months Below Zero

Thailand's headline inflation dropped 0.66% in January, the tenth straight month in negative territory and more than the 0.40% decline economists were expecting. Energy prices and government subsidies keep pushing the number down, leaving the rate well below the central bank's 1% to 3% target range. Core inflation, which strips out food and fuel, rose 0.60%, so the commerce ministry is keen to point out that “this isn't deflation!“ (yet). The headline figure is expected to flip positive in April when seasonal demand normally pushes up produce prices, and then to climb to 1.15% by year's end. Governor Vitai Ratanakorn thinks inflation will return to the target range next year, not this one, the third consecutive year officials have promised normalization is just around the corner. Nothing is certain, but expect another rate cut when the monetary policy committee meets February 25.

Read more: Investing (Headline CPI), Thai Enquirer (January CPI)

Trillion-Baht Bridge Floats Back Into View

Pheu Thai party’s Kokaew Pikulthong was again talking up the Chumphon-Ranong land bridge at a February 4 debate in Songkhla, pitching the 1 trillion baht project as a Southern jobs bonanza that would create 280,000 roles and double the economies of both provinces. The plan, a perennial fixture of Thai campaign seasons, promises to cut shipping times by connecting the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand across Thailand’s narrowest point. Five other parties also showed Southern development platforms ahead of the election, with Bhumjaithai countering with a 14-province package and a Hat Yai flood ring road set for 2035 completion.

Banks Give Expats the Cold Shoulder

Bangkok Bank and other major Thai lenders have been quietly shuttering foreign-held accounts with little to no explanation, leaving expats in Pattaya, Phuket, and Chiang Mai scrambling. The closures, said to be part of an anti-fraud crackdown that picked up speed through 2024 and 2025, has hit foreigners without long-term visas hardest. The biggest complaints are not about the accounts closing - people are much more irritated with the lack of communication. Compliance rules prevent branch staff from explaining why accounts get flagged, creating a Kafkaesque loop where expats can't access savings, can't receive overseas transfers, and can't prove funds for visa renewals. Authorities claim that legitimate accounts are getting restored quickly, more than a handful of people have reported waiting days or weeks without money. The crackdown shows no signs of easing, and expats are increasingly keeping emergency funds in home-country accounts or regional banks with branches across ASEAN, an expensive workaround that shows how far trust has eroded.

G Codes for Ghost Kids

The education ministry told schools this week they can register undocumented migrant and refugee children using a specialized 13-digit "G Code" instead of requiring the normal documentation. The system lets schools count stateless students in enrollment numbers and claim per-head government subsidies to cover costs. Secretary-general Pichet Phophakdee said that the change is because of a 2005 (!?) Cabinet resolution and Thailand's commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He also presented access as being a tool for "reducing social problems" and "promoting long-term national security."

The Billion-Baht Barrier

Asean Briefing posted a helpful article this week on how Thailand’s competition law works in practice. Foreign buyers that are sniffing around Thai acquisitions may be surprise to learn that they will hit a regulatory tripwire at THB 1 billion in annual turnover, (~$28M). Cross that line and the Trade Competition Commission is going to want to take a look at your deal. The catch is that an offshore parent's revenue will be counted toward that amount, so it’s not just revenue from the Thai operations that will be used in the calculation. Share purchases that hand over control obviously qualify, but so will asset deals that move customer contracts or the workforce, including joint ventures investors get real say over decisions. The Commission sorts transactions into two buckets. Deals that are likely to substantially reduce competition need approval before closing, but lower-risk transactions only need a filing after the fact. The difference will matter for evaluating timelines and deciding whether merger clearance is pre-closing condition or just paperwork. Even minority stakes aren't automatically safe: voting rights, board seats, or veto power over decisions can also trigger filing requirements without majority ownership. Again - helpful article, good reading…

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