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SINGAPORE – Thailand will receive its first batch of vaccine next month and plans to start producing its own, according to its finance minister.
For starters, around 100,000 doses will arrive, Arkhom Termpittayapaisith told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday.
“The first vaccines will arrive in Thailand next month, the first batch,” he said, adding that the Thai company Siam Bioscience will work with the British and Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to develop vaccines to make them available to the public. both for Thailand and other countries. .
He was speaking to CNBC as part of the coverage of the World Economic Forum’s Davos agenda.
Thailand will launch its vaccine rollout on February 14 and aims to vaccinate 19 million people in the first phase, its prime minister said on Wednesday, according to a Reuters report.
The Southeast Asian nation has obtained 26 million doses of AstraZeneca produced by Siam Bioscience and 2 million doses of Sinovac in China, according to the report. He has also reserved 35 million doses of AstraZeneca, he added.
The pandemic hits tourism
Termpittayapaisith also said tourism is expected to pick up by the end of the year, rather than mid-year as previously expected. Thailand’s economy relies heavily on tourism for its growth, but foreign tourist arrivals have come to a halt almost completely during the pandemic.
Tourist arrivals fell 66% in the first six months of 2020 to 6.69 million, as countries around the world implemented lockdowns and travel restrictions due to the pandemic.
By comparison, Thailand had a record 39.8 million tourists in 2019, according to Reuters. Tourism spending accounted for around 11% of Thailand’s GDP that year, according to the report.
Commuters, wearing face masks, wait for a boat on the canal in Bangkok on March 2, 2020.
MLADEN ANTONOV | AFP | Getty Images
“We are also focusing on domestic consumption, so you can see that the economic package … (is) promoting more spending on the core economy,” Termpittayapaisith said, adding that it aims to compensate for the drop in income from international tourism.
Thailand on Thursday reduced its economic growth forecast for this year to 2.8%, from 4.5% it had forecast earlier. The economy is expected to contract 6.6% in 2020, according to its central bank.
The country reported a record 959 cases on Tuesday, the largest daily increase since early January, as it accelerated testing, according to Reuters.
Thailand has one of the lowest reported cases in Southeast Asia. It has so far reported 17,023 cases and 76 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
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