The search for lessons from lost economic decades has led from Japan to the U.S. to Europe. Now the spotlight turns to Thailand.

This may strike some as odd, considering Thailand’s 5.3 percent growth, its young and expanding population, and the surprising level of political stability in Bangkok. In her two years leading Thailand’s 68 million people, Yingluck Shinawatra has somehow managed to tamp down the virtual civil war that led to the ouster of her prime minister brother in 2006.

Look closer, though, at the thrust of Yingluck’s economic policies. Her government has subsidized rice prices, provided handouts to car buyers and favored megaprojects that will enrich the politically connected more than the masses. All this comes at the expense of long-term competitiveness and prosperity: Thailand should instead be investing in its future, especially education, if it wants to break out of the “middle-income trap” that befalls many developing nations.

Yingluck’s U-turn last week on the government’s policy of hoarding rice at above-market rates is a case in point. She had planned to limit a practice that jeopardizes the country’s fiscal position and warps commodity markets. Moody’s Investors Service says the subsidies damage Thailand’s credit rating. Yet she caved to farmers, even firing her commerce minister to do so.

Granted, the program isn’t bankrupting Thailand. The country’s $346 billion economy can handle the $4.4 billion the government blew on rice purchases last year. But Yingluck’s recent priorities bear troubling similarities to those her exiled brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, championed from 2001 to 2006. His vaunted “Thaksinomics” never amounted to more than a Tammany Hall-like doling out of cash in return for rural votes.

In January, Yingluck unveiled a plan to lift Thai living standards. She proposed spending about $72 billion over 10 years on transportation, energy and telecommunications projects. Yingluck’s government is pushing an $8.6 billion port-and-industrial-zone project in neighboring Myanmar. Last week in Turkey, she called for a “New Silk Road” rail project to link Europe and Asia.

“We have some very big ideas, concrete ones, to make growth more inclusive,” Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipunt told me last month in Bangkok.

Forgotten in this ambitious building boom, though, is any investment in social infrastructure. It’s even more important to invest billions of dollars in education and in training to improve the quality of the labor force and raise productivity so that Thailand can keep up in the world’s most dynamic region. The country lags not just at the tertiary level, but also at the primary and secondary phases of the education process. Like several other countries in the region, Thailand’s focus on rote learning gives short shrift to creative and critical thinking and English proficiency.

“There is little sign that inadequate investment in human capital and the need for reform of the education system is recognized by the current government,” says economist Peter Warr at the Australian National University in Canberra. He’s done extensive research on Thailand’s economic growing pains.

Thailand matters because it’s a role model in the region. As Myanmar exits decades of isolation and tries to build a healthy economy, it’s looking to Thailand for direction and financing. The same goes for Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. How Thailand evolves will reverberate around the neighborhood.

At the moment, Thailand is walking in place even if its headline growth rates outpace Japan, the U.S. and Europe. To Bank of Thailand economist Piti Disyatat, per-capita gross domestic product tells the story: It has been hovering around 15 percent to 20 percent of U.S. levels for more than 10 years.

This is a precarious moment for Thailand to be stuck at a per capita GDP of about $5,000. Global growth is tepid, China is slowing, and Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam are winning jobs that Thailand once took for granted. As Thai wages rise, so do production costs. It must move faster up the value chain to build more technologically advanced products in the electronics and automobiles sectors ― preferably bearing Thai names, not just Japanese ones.

Building a more entrepreneurial workforce requires big investments and political will, both of which are in short supply. Corruption, among other things, skews incentives. Massive road, bridge and power-grid projects are dripping with opportunities for politicians and business people to line their pockets. “There are few if any kickbacks available from investment in education,” Warr says. “Physical infrastructure is another matter.”

Thaksin’s policy of cash handouts to rural areas was the economic equivalent of a sugar high. It did nothing to strengthen government institutions, build a credible legal system or invest in human capital. The five prime ministers who led Thailand between Thaksin’s ouster and his sister’s victory in July 2011 spent all their time avoiding another coup.

Now that Thailand is stable, it’s time to invest in the future. Pouring more money into people rather than rice farms and construction companies would be a good start. 

By William Pesek

William Pesek is a Bloomberg View columnist. ― Ed.

(Bloomberg)