Thailand: bonds, indices, credit ratings

The Thai bond market made a significant stride of development following the 1997 Asian crisis when Thai Government issued substantial amount of debt instruments to mobilize funds for the nation’s development in many aspects. At the end of 2006, outstanding value of domestic bonds totaled THB 4,085.26 billion, the majority portions or about 77% of which were government debt securities comprising loan bonds (LB) and treasury bills (TB) issued by the Ministry of Finance (43%), state agency bonds* (22%) and state-owned enterprise bonds (12%). The remaining 23% were long term corporate bonds and commercial papers whereas the Baht denominated foreign bonds shared marginally by less than 1%.
The long term corporate bonds in Thailand are mainly straight and plain. For structured bonds which are featured to be more complicated than general debt instruments, the market is still at an early stage of development. The structured bonds can be categorized into two groups: structured notes and securitization bonds. Most of the structured notes in Thailand are issued by commercial banks and are mainly Equity-Linked Notes (ELN). Although the period 1993-1998 witnessed the emergence of securitization market development in Thailand, it did not gain considerable momentum until late 2003 when Dhanarak Asset Development Company Limited (DAD), an asset management company owned by the Ministry of Finance (MOF), mobilized funds though the issuance of the largest size of securitization bonds in Thailand for the Government Complex Project.