• Thailand’s oil and gas sector is well-established, dating back to extensive exploration in the 1970s and commercial discoveries by international companies in the 1980s. Thailand has already conducted 20 petroleum concession bidding rounds, making this sector one of the most advanced, relative to other nations in the region
• Over the last four decades, Thailand has made remarkable progress in social and economic development, moving from a low-income to an upper middle-income country in less than a generation
• Thailand is in the process of diversifying and securing new supplies in the realisation that current usage, forecast demand and current supply challenges are unsustainable, and to an extent leaves Thailand vulnerable
  
  

Impact of COVID-19

• While Thailand has been successful in stemming the tide of COVID-19 (coronavirus) infections for most of 2020, the economic impact has been severe and has led to widespread job losses, affecting middle-class households and the poor alike and threatening hard-won gains in poverty reduction
• Economic growth in Thailand contracted to 6.1% in 2020 due to a decline in external demand affecting trade and tourism, supply chain disruptions, and weakening domestic consumption. The COVID-19 outbreak has created several additional challenges in the labor market. Its deepest slum in over 2 decades with tourism sector devastated by the impact of the pandemic
• Thailand’s policy response has acted to bolster economic activity and support the livelihoods of the most vulnerable, which has centered on a 1 trillion baht package to fund cash transfers, the medical response, and economic and social rehabilitation. New large-scale cash transfer programs have been established to support vulnerable groups who would not otherwise have been covered by existing social assistance mechanisms
• Economy activity is not expected to return to its pre-pandemic levels until 2022 and the recovery is projected to be slow and uneven