Thailand Economy

As an up-and-coming young Thai professional during the mid-1980s, K. Surapong regularly ended long workdays with a few drinks with his buddies and sex with prostitutes--sometimes protected, often not. Surapong, now with full-blown AIDS, has spent the last few years as one of the country's leading "guinea pigs," testing an array of drugs that temporarily arrest the symptoms of the virus.

Until two years ago, Prasert Kerdtip scraped a meager living from the soil, earning only $80 a year by growing rice. But in 1991, he made $8,000 on his farm and bought his two sons new Kawasaki motorcycles in celebration. Uan Chotikorn was once a prosperous farmer, earning more than $2,500 a year on her six acres of rice paddy. But now that paddy has turned sterile, and she scrapes out a living by selling sodas at a small roadside stand.

Just two years ago, the sheer speed of Thailand's economic growth made it appear destined to become Asia's next "little dragon," trailing South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. But a hail of army bullets on the streets of Bangkok in May, triggered by anti-military protests, has dimmed hopes of the country becoming an economic dragon any time soon.

Ask any businessman in Thailand what the country needs most, and the answer is invariably the same: infrastructure. While the 1980s ushered in a period of unprecedented economic boom for Thailand, the economic takeoff was largely confined to the private sector. Meanwhile, roads clogged to a standstill with new cars, telephone customers waited years for a new phone and ports backed up with freighters waiting to unload.

Stocks in Thailand plunged Monday in response to the weekend military coup, and economists predicted that Asia's fastest-growing economy could stumble for months before a recovery. The country's new military rulers, who call themselves the National Peacekeeping Council, announced Monday that an interim government will be formed within a week.

As a radio barked overhead, Sgt. Komart Plongkong, looking militarily precise in a gray uniform with a chest full of campaign ribbons, punched a button on the console in front of him, blew a nickel-plated whistle and waved his arm with the casual assurance of one accustomed to giving orders. Suddenly the ground began to tremble, and there was a deafening roar. The air boiled, filling the tiny command post with acrid black smoke.