Value of Sex industry to Thailand

[Guest]

Nice to know that our GDP (Gross Dick Payouts) is 1 % of the Thai's GDP.

Nobody can say that we do not contibute our mite

[Mentors]

Not to forget how much millions EURO (hehe)

ex thai-sexworkers (married or meanwhile divorced with farangs) stayin,in Europe or America and sending money back to Thailand every month.

I know for example thats for Vietnam the

rate are more than 50% from all money coming

to Vietnam from exile-Vietnamese.

[Elation]

I totally agree that the elimination of sanuk in Thailand is not the true purpose of the current crackdown. It is unrealistic and will never happen. The oldest profession is and will be practiced in every country of the world. It happens in every western country, and in economically strong and deprived countries. But what if your country has been labelled a giant whorehouse, and your daughters and wives harassed when they try to carry out their normal lives or travel abroad. I think that most of us would be angry. Even if 20% of the population benefit from the sex industry, 80% don't ...and they suffer the stigma associated with the minority. The "Repackaging" has to do with image and marketing. My point is that Las Vegas did not eliminate gambling and women when they did their transformation...they just repackaged it in a more acceptable venue.

Yes, its an image thing... a new image on the surface and business as usual underneath. Squash the visible eyesores, put on a fresh coat of paint, and make it less noticeable by surrounding it with legitimate businesses.

Remember, Thais are proud people and they are proud of their country. In the end, they will choose to save "face" over any economic hardship that any repackaging may cause.

[Guest]

Serious Sanuk is absolutely right when he states the crack down "is more like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." There have been police raids on teenage venues and farang venues, but I don't recall seeing any senior IM officials or police officers leading raids on the myriad of clubs that offer underage girls to wealthy Thai-Chinese businessmen.

If the concern is exploitation of woman or, in the case of places that carter to the Thai-Chinese, girls, the real problem has always been and remains in the Thai and Thai-Chinese places. There has been no effort to clean up these venues, and when Time Magazine pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of the purported "crack down", a certain senior Minister had a fit. Losing face is a serious matter.

When posters state that think that "Thailand is taking a bold (and maybe a brillant) new move in the right direction," they are missing an important point. A bold move would be a crackdown on the venues that hold woman in bondage and offer underage woman. That is not happening.

While I do not always agree with everything Stickman posts, his latest report makes some good points about face. This is about face. Farang oriented venues are "offensive" because they are so open with their shows, but that is only a small part of the story. It is also important to maintain the fiction that the commercial sex scene is a scene that carters primarily to farangs. This is a popular fairy tale in Thai culture, and like most fairy tales it isn't and has never been.

[ December 31, 2001: Message edited by: Gadfly ]

[Lord Toad]

Geting back to my position. I was trying to make the point that we (farangs) do spend serious money on Thai prostitutes. Enough money to make a differnece to the Thai economy if we all disapeared. Of course the Thai internal prostitution is much much much larger than the farang business.

Talking about the size of the business it is worth looking a little more carefully at the figures. With Thai official GDP being worth 121 Bil $ this year. 10% would be 12 Bil $, much less than the 20 Mil plus mentioned.

If we assume there are 50,000 working girls they would need to create a turnover of 70$ per day to earn that amount.

50,000 is a low figure. In beer bars and Gogo etc (not massage parlours)in Pattaya a serious estimete is 18,000 girls are working in 650 establishments. Add massage parlours and the figure must be nearer 20,000. Then just think about the rest of Thailand, not just Farang places and I am sure 50,000 is low.

I am resonably happy with my figures for what we spend (as opposed to the Thais)

There is the business of sex services and the business of tourist services. It seems that both may account for 10% of GDP, making 20% in total.

I have always felt that about 20% of tourists are affected by the nightlife scene. To the point where it is important to them, but by no means the only reason for visiting LOS. That could mean if the Thais stopped tourists geting involved with prostitutes they could lose up to 4% of their GDP.

I do not believe the Thai nation would accept the affect of such an econoimic downer. however much face it may save. In the end the Baht in the pocket is more important, or should I say standard of living.

I started on this exercise because nobody seemed to have all the answers. We still don't but I am now convinced that the farang sanuk scene is an important part of the Thai ecomomy.

[Flashermac]

As World Walker notes, the foreign sex scene is simply a very small part of the overall picture. However, the foreign tourists unquestionably bring a lot of needed money into the country. Moreover, the "sex tourists" are repeat visitors. The ordinary tourist may come to Thailand once or twice. But the horny folks keep coming back year after year, sometimes even several times a year. Plus how many of them want to retire in Thailand? Politicians are deluding themselves when they think the sex tourists have little effect on the economy.

One problem is that most Thai politicians are well off. Thus they can afford all the mia noi they want. They don't have to go to go-go bars or massage parlours, let alone the brothels the Thai proles visit.

[Guest]

It is always unbelievable to me how pretend the Thai government is regarding prostitution. the Thai scene is far more distasteful and underground therefore to the Thai's it does not exist.

The current "social" thing is a cleansing of the society. It is more like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The last thing the government wants is any real change. Imagine implementing some type of educational system that would give the next generation of women alternatives and choices to make a living. Than the governement could not be seen like the Elliot Nesses of America in cleaning up the society; and I say like because they are not.

Having been to Thailand many times you realize how education and or knowledge just give you more boxes to see the world from. The majority of these women have a very narrow scope. The Thai men for the most part seem to treat them as second class citizens. I dont know what will change any of this there. The "Cleansing of the Society" just seems to be a smoke screen to divert attention from other corrupt practices that in fact are the norm in Thailand, where we see real "capital punishment" being practiced. The more capital the less punishment. So for the time being the police shake down the prostitutes in the farang scene take them down to the staion and extract 500 Baht fines and than let them go. What position does that put the police in ?

[Guest]

I don't think the comparison of Las Vegas with Thailand demonstrates how Thailand might turn straw to gold, but it is very helpful in explaining why the crackdown is proving to be so disastrous for the tourist industry generally in Thailand.

Las Vegas is known as Sin City, but the primairy sin is not pay-for-play, but gambling. There has been no attempt to limit or restrict gambling in Las Vegas. It's available 24/7. Thailand has taken an entirely different tack.

The crackdown in Thailand started with early closing times. In Las Vegas there was no attempt to impose early closing times on the casinos or bars. It wasn't a factor because they recognized in Las Vegas that it would not reduce the problems they wanted to fix, e.g., street walkers and general seediness, and that late closing times are necessary for any tourist venue that is largely based on nightlife activities.

In the post-September 11 era, all tourists, but particularly tourists from the more prosperous parts of the globe (Northern America, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Northern Europe), feel much more vulunerable. Tourist locales in the U.S, and Las Vegas, are going out of their way to make tourist feel more secure. Tourist arrivals are starting to recover.

Thailand seems to have done the opposite. Deserved or not, the current Thai government has a reputation as being anti-foreigner. Prospective tourists may not scour the Asian Wall Street Journal for the latest news on Thailand's economic policies, but when they start to consider a locale, they do start to get a general sense of the country's reputation in the international press. Thailand does not enjoy a good reputation these days. As information startes to spread that the government is targetting bars frequented by foreigners (e.g., locking-in the patrons of Q Bar for hours and subjecting them to the indignity of urine tests), Thailand's reputation will suffer even more.

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by Lord Toad:

I caught a newspaper article a couple of weeks back which said prostitution account for 10 ? 14% of Thai GDP (Gross domestic Product). That got me thinking because if it is true, or anywhere near the truth, it makes it just about as important as Thai?s gems and jewellery business. And therefore if closed down would cause massive harm to Thailand?s economy.

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Nice post but some 90 % of all prostitution is a purely local thing and will very much so show up in GDP figures. It seems unlikely those figures refer to income from sex tourism. GDP also reflects on how a buck earned is spend and how quickly. Somebody making a buck on tapioca, spending it on a hooker, sending it to daddy in Isarn, spending it on a hooker, spending it on a cellphone: That's not just one dollar added to GDP. You can increase GDP by simply increasing the rate a given amount of money circulates.

Calculating GDP and GNP is pretty complex as far as I know. Prostitution could rank high because added value is very high.

If you buy stuff at 50 cents, assemble it, and sell it at a 55 cents, added value is 10 %. In case of pussy, added value is much higher, theoretically a 100 %. And pussy will spend every nickel the next morning on top of things.

For every sex tourist, there are 9 just interested in golf and diving and temples and stuff, spending mo-mo on hotels and food too. It doesn't strike me as plausible the average sex tourist spends more than 600 US typically on "sanuk". Let's say 400 M US$ a year. Thai GNP equals about 120 Billion though.

Assuming money circulates 3-4 times a year which would be typical of a western country, it's pretty difficult to see how the sex industry as such could add more than 1 % to GDP. More likely even less.

Insofar those figures (the 10-14 %) are correct, it merely demonstrates Thai men are extremely horny bastards, spending some 10 % of every Baht they earn on soapies and brothels.

Sorry for those who seem to believe they keep the Thai economy from collapsing: It simply is a pipedream I'm afraid.

Overall, sex tourism may very well have a negative effect on GDP but cannot proof that so won't go into detail.

[Guest]

Sex tourism has such complex dynamics as they apply to LOS. We can however be quite sure that farangs load their baht guns and boost the economy much more than anyone will admit.

Think about this! Would Pattaya draw surfers even if the water wasn't so filthy? Would we continue to visit Bangkok because we like the daily air quality so much? Would expats be tolerated as much? Would you still live in LOS?