A view of Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand (Source: oneyoungworld.com)
Bangkok (VNA) - TheThai Commerce Ministry forecasts the country's exports will grow 4 percent to over 238 billionUSD in 2021.
Pimchanok Vonkorpon,director-general of the ministry’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office said nextyear's growth would be driven largely by food, products related to working fromhome, home appliances, healthcare, the recovering global economy and theavailability of the COVID-19 vaccine.
"Despite a second wave of infections reported by manytrading partners, their lockdown measures are not as tight as during the firstwave of the outbreak to curb the impact on overall economies," said Pimchanok."A successful vaccine would build up confidence in the world's economicprospects from the second quarter."
Earlier, the Commerce Ministry reported the country's customs-cleared exportsfetched 18.9 billion USD in November, down 3.65 percent from the same month oflast year, with imports shrinking 0.99 percent to 18.9 billion USD, resultingin a trade surplus of 52.6 million USD.
For the first 11 months of 2020, Thai exports contracted 6.92percent to 211 billion USD while imports dropped 13.7 percent to 188 billionUSD, resulting in a trade surplus of 23.5 billion USD.
The ministry forecast Thai exports for theentire year of 2020 are set to shrink by 7 percent to 238 billion USD./.
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A view of Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand (Source: oneyoungworld.com) 
