Change in Inventory

Highlights

• The change in inventory is the change in the monetary value of all the goods in the nation's inventory. It is one portion of the national income account, categorized as an investment cost.

• There was a change in inventory of 131.436 billion THB (3.76 billion USD) over all of 2008, about a1.4 percent share of national income. This was a large increase over the previous year, with fourth quarter 2008 inventory valued at 65.4 times that of the previous year. The principal cause was the recession, leading many buyers to cancel their orders. At the same time industrial production was low, so that previously purchased raw materials remained unused, and reductions in rice exports meant increasingly large stocks of agricultural goods.

• KResearch forecasts that the change in inventories for 2009 will be considerably lower than it was for the previous year, due recession, both in the domestic economy and in the economies of our trading partners. In response, businesses are expected to reduce costs by reducing inventory.