While bar charts, line graphs and simple numbers are hardly capable of providing the defining answer to many economic, social and political questions, they are certainly a good way of obtaining a general overview of any particular subject.
Each month the Business Supplement will look into a brace of statistical information and provide readers with what we consider to be the central elements of these figures.
Thailand has more women than men
The number of females as a share of the total Thai population stands at 51.3 per cent as of the latest census statistics at the end of 2019.
It was not always the case that there were more females than males in the Kingdom. In 1970 the female population made up only 49.9 per cent of the total, but it has been steadily rising and by 2008 stood at 50.9 per cent.
Since then the imbalance has further increased at a remarkably steady rate of 0.07 per cent each and every year. By 2012 the ratio was 51.1 per cent and by 2015 it was 51.2 per cent.
Today’s ratio of 51.3 per cent may not seem like much of a deviation from the 50 per cent perfect balance of equality, but a little mathematics can put the number into light. It means that for every 100 men there are 102.7 women, or for every 100 women there are only 97.5 men.
Thailand is not the only country to have more women than men, and indeed there are much starker examples.
In Russia, for every 100 women there are only 86.8 men. In Eastern European countries such as Estonia and Lithuania the numbers are similar at 88 and 85.3 respectively.
Conversely in China there are 106.3 men for every 100 women due in part to the practice of sex selective birth preferences.
At the extreme end of the scale the UAE in the Middle East has 274 men for every 100 women meaning there are nearly three times as many men as women.
Other Middle Eastern nations also have high imbalances, with Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar sporting 130.1, 197 and 265.5 men for every 100 women.
The average for the world is 101.8 men for every 100 women.
Thailand almost doubled its international reserves
Thailand almost doubled its international reserves in the 10 years from 2008 to 2018. At 2018 the number stood at 205.6 billion U.S. dollars.
As per the definition provided by the IMF, international reserves are a combination of a country’s foreign exchange on hand, its monetary gold reserves, its reserve position in the IMF, and the value of its US Dollar Special Drawing Rights by its monetary authorities.
In 2008 Thailand had just over US$111 billion in international reserves, but in the two years following the worldwide great financial recession of that year, reserves in Thailand actually increased by 24 per cent per year to stand at US$172 billion by 2010.
Yet for the next 6 years international reserve growth slowed and even slipped into negative territory in some years. From 2010 to 2016, international reserves grew by just 0.15 per cent on average. The following year saw a jump of 17.91 per cent with reserves topping US$202.5 billion.
