"Our duty is to look at the social need and whether that need affects us or not. There is no impact on us yet," said Krirk Vanikkul, the central bank's deputy governor for financial institutions stability. "Our rules are relatively flexible. If banks want to relax anything for customers, they can do so without our permission."
Export-Import Bank of Thailand executive vice president Warangkana Wongkhaluang said impact to the bank from the quake had been small so far. The export destinations of most of its customers are Osaka and Tokyo, which were not in the centre of the crisis.
Based on the bank's preliminary assessment, there could be damage of about Bt100 million to loan portfolios and export insurance from the disaster. The bank was monitoring the situation even though no customers had contacted it yet.
"It may take a while for both the export and insurance sides [to evaluate the situation]. If buyers whose plants are situated in the disaster areas miss payment for products, we will pay for exporters with export insurance. We still provide export insurance and loans. Our policy remains unchanged," Warangkana said.
Meanwhile, the powerful quake and tsunami in Japan have prompted the Thai Commerce Ministry to revamp its strategies regarding that market to maintain the Kingdom's export levels.
After meeting with exporters yesterday, the Export Promotion Department said it would consider plans after the situation there has settled down.
However, the Thai Trade Centres in Japan are in Tokyo and Osaka, so they are sticking to existing plans.
Nuntawan Sakuntanaga, director-general of the department, said the Thai Frozen Foods Association reported that its members' initial losses had reached US$2 million (Bt60 million) already and products worth $9 million had been suspended in ports.
The association said an average of $3 million worth of products were unable to be distributed each day.
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