The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has positively revised Thailand’s economic growth in 2026-27 upward, boosted by the government’s fiscal measures and robust exports and investment.
According to the latest publishing report by the IMF in its World Economic Outlook (July 2026), growth for Thailand in 2026 is also revised upward by 0.4 percentage point to 1.9 percent, reflecting emergency fiscal measures and further supported by robust technology-related exports and investment. Growth is expected to accelerate to 2.2% in 2027, up 0.1 percentage point from its April projection.
The IMF noted that much of the positive surprise was concentrated in a few economies that are well integrated into the global technology value chain, even though some of these economies also had exposure to commodity market disruptions originating from the war: For instance, the top four net exporters of AI-related hardware (Taiwan Province of China, Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia) had an average seasonally adjusted annualized surprise of 4.4 percentage points, whereas the surprise for the world’s remaining countries was -0.3 percentage point.
Korea, despite its heavy reliance on imported energy from the Middle East, surprised with a 7.5 percent growth rate, more than four times the 1.8 percent projected in April, powered primarily by a semiconductor and AI-hardware export boom.
China’s economy expanded faster than expected at 8.1 percent (based on the IMF staff’s seasonally adjusted estimates), with the expansion driven by front-loaded public infrastructure investment and a surge in high-tech manufacturing and in exports, even as domestic consumption remained soft.
Japan’s economy grew by 1.8 percent, also beating expectations, with a strong contribution from net trade and exports and a pickup in private consumption.
