Consumer’s confidence index for the month of July was registered at 82.2 representing the highest rate for the past 62 months of five years and two months since June 2013, said Mr Thanawat Pholvichai, director of Economic and Business Forecast Centre of the Thai Chamber of Commerce University.

He said that tourism and export sectors continued to expand, resulting to consumers feeling good that there was more money in their pockets as evidenced by the high number of people travelling and spending more during the long holidays last week.

Consumer’s confidence index for the next six months was registered at 93.5 compared to 92.5 registered in the last survey which was regarded as the highest in 42 months since February 2015.

Consumer’s confidence in the state of the economy increased to  69.1 in July from 67.9 a month earlier – the highest in 69 months – whereas consumer’s confidence in the economy in the future increased to 86.9 from 85.7 – representing the highest in 162 months.

The adjustments of consumer’s confidence index in all areas represented a signal that the purchasing power of the consumers started to recover and that the economy was recovering in a more expansive fashion.

Mr Thanawat said the centre predicted that growth rate this year was likely to increase to 4.5-5 percent this year as evident in the strong performance of export and tourism sectors.

However, he said if the government expedited budgetary spending and pushed for investments in the Eastern Economic Corridor infrastructure projects, there is a likelihood that growth rate next year may be within 5-7 percent.