Here are some comments from around the Web + my own at the bottom

Thailand is the least preferred equity market in Southeast Asia given lofty valuations and ongoing political uncertainty, Morgan Stanley wrote in a report this week, predicting a possible 10 percent decline in the MSCI Thailand Index in dollar terms. The baht is Asia’s worst-performing major currency this quarter with a 2.9 percent drop versus the dollar. (*)

That’s the problem with Thailand. At $14,400 GDP per capita it’s close to the world average, 15% richer than China and more than twice as rich as Philippines or Vietnam. Hence serious conflict would be very damaging to its economic development. As China has shown, a stable dictatorship might work, but that’s not what Thailand is likely to get. (**)

The government’s intention to boost spending sounds impressive but execution of budgeted investment plan has historically been “poor,” BNP Paribas SA economist Philip McNicholas wrote in a report this week. “Long implementation lags compound the injury to Thailand’s investment appeal by simultaneously hampering economic recovery and undermining investors’ perception of policy credibility.”(*)

It is no surprise that the economic scorecard is negative, the purpose of the coup was, in theory, to clean up politics, government offices and reset the political system. I really doubt that Prayuth thought “I’m going to overthrow the government and boost the country’s GDP.” Thus the arguably correct way is to see how have they performed in reforming Thailand’s political system, they haven’t really done much yet, the new constitution has yet to be approved and former politicians are still going through the court processes, this entire saga could still drag on for quite a while unless they decide to utilise Section 44. Now as for the economy, I’m honestly not worried, Thailand’s economy is still working through the hangover of the subsidies from the Yingluck government and all this debt reduction takes time, plus compounded with the decline in agriculture prices (of which 80% the working population is involved in) there shouldn’t be a surprise that things are taking longer to work out. But going forward I’m still optimistic of the infrastructure spending, yes there will be delays but I’d still like to argue (and this is substantiated from discussions with several business owners) that it is a result of reduced corruption which is an incredibly positive outcome of the coup.

(*) Source: Bloomberg

(**)Source: Investing Daily