Since 2000 the baht has gained against the dollar, the yen, the won, the ringgit and the Taiwan dollar, so money earned abroad buys fewer baht than it did.

In 2000 a US dollar bought ฿40.21 on average. In 2025 it bought ฿32.86¹. In 2026 to 23 October the average was ฿32.58, and on 23 October a dollar bought ฿33.76². Over the 25 years to 2025 the baht price of a dollar fell by 18%, or 0.80% a year on average; put the other way, the baht gained about 22% against the dollar¹. That is the opposite of what many families expect of an Asian currency, and it matters most to the people who earn abroad and plan to spend in Thailand later. This report sets out the baht against six currencies Thais abroad earn in, explains why it rose, and works through what that did to savings held on each side.

First, 1997

Any history of the baht starts with the crisis. Thailand has run a managed float since 2 July 1997, the Bank of Thailand says, intervening when the baht moves too sharply but without targeting a rate or pegging it to another currency³. The change was abrupt. In the Federal Reserve’s daily series a dollar bought ฿24.52 on 1 July 1997 and ฿30.18 on 2 July, and on 12 January 1998 it bought ฿56.10². Measured by yearly averages, a dollar cost ฿25.36 in 1996, ฿31.07 in 1997 and ฿41.26 in 1998, 63% more than two years earlier¹.

Most of what followed was a slow recovery. The yearly average peaked at ฿44.53 in 2001, was back to ฿40.25 in 2005 and fell to ฿32.20 in 2007¹. Since then a dollar has never averaged more than ฿35.28 in a year, which it reached in 2024¹. For the rest of this report the starting point is 2000, so that the crisis itself does not decide the result.

Twenty-five years in six currencies

Thai workers go where the jobs are. In the Department of Employment’s ranking reported by Thai PBS in October 2023, Taiwan was the largest destination for Thai workers, followed by Israel, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia⁴. The table and charts below use the currencies of those places that the Federal Reserve publishes, plus the US dollar and the Singapore dollar. The Israeli shekel is not in the Federal Reserve’s series, so it is left out rather than taken from a different source on a different basis.

The yen fell furthest. A hundred yen bought ฿37.30 on average in 2000 and ฿21.97 in 2025, 41% less; a thousand won fell from ฿35.56 to ฿23.12, 35% less^7,6. The ringgit lost 27% and the Taiwan dollar 18%, about as much as the US dollar^8,5. The Singapore dollar is the exception in the table: it rose from ฿23.31 to ฿25.15, because it strengthened against the US dollar by more than the baht did⁹.

The average yearly change, and why the average misleads

Measured from the 2000 average to the 2025 average, the baht price of a yen fell by 2.09% a year, of a won by 1.71%, of a ringgit by 1.28%, of a US dollar by 0.80% and of a Taiwan dollar by 0.79%, while the baht price of a Singapore dollar rose by 0.30% a year^1,7,6,8,5,9.

A fall of 0.80% a year in the baht price of a dollar never happened in any particular year. Between the 2000 and 2005 averages it rose by 0.02% a year, then from 2005 to 2010 it fell by 4.66% a year, the fastest stretch of the period, and from 2010 to 2015 it rose again by 1.55% a year¹. Within years the swings were larger still. On 19 April 2013 a dollar bought ฿28.60, the strongest the baht has been in the daily series since the float; by 27 December 2013 it bought ฿32.85². On 14 October 2022 it bought ฿38.28, and on 23 February 2026 ฿30.96².

Why the baht rose: the inflation gap

The usual explanation is relative purchasing power parity: over long periods, a currency tends to move against another by roughly the gap between their inflation rates, because otherwise goods in one would keep getting cheaper than in the other. From 2001 to 2024 consumer prices in Thailand rose by 1.94% a year on average, and in the US by 2.53%, so Thailand’s price level multiplied by 1.58 while America’s multiplied by 1.82^10,11. Prices rose more slowly in Thailand, so the baht had room to rise.

If the exchange rate had tracked that gap exactly, a dollar would have cost about ฿34.98 in 2024. It cost ฿35.28 instead^1,10,11. Over these 24 years the baht came within about 1% of where the inflation gap alone would have taken it, which is unusually close: the rupee, by contrast, fell by much less than India’s inflation gap implied, as our rupee report shows. Parity is a long-run tendency, not a law; the years above show how far a rate can wander from it in the meantime.

Parity says nothing about the level, only the direction. The World Bank’s purchasing power parity for household consumption in Thailand was ฿10.61 per international dollar in 2025, against a market rate of ฿32.86^12,1. Put simply, converted at the market rate, what Thai households buy cost about 32% of what the same basket cost in the US. And the inflation gap itself is not fixed. The Bank of Thailand’s target for headline inflation is a range of 1% to 3% over the medium term¹³, and Thai consumer prices fell by 0.13% in 2025, below that range¹⁰.

What it did to savings kept abroad

Take two illustrative cousins working in Japan in 2000. Each sets aside ¥1,000,000, worth ฿372,990 at that year’s average rates^1,7. One keeps it in yen; the other sends it home and keeps baht. To isolate the currency, assume neither earns any interest. By 2025 the yen were worth ฿219,711, while the baht cousin still had ฿372,990^1,7. A third, working in the US, who kept $10,000 from 2000 saw it go from ฿402,098 to ฿328,619 over the same years¹.

Now ask what each could buy at home. Thai consumer prices rose 1.58 times from 2000 to 2025, so a basket that cost ฿372,990 in 2000 cost about ฿590,200 in 2025¹⁰. The cousin who kept yen could buy 37% of that basket, the cousin who kept baht 63%. The dollar saver’s money bought 52% of the basket the same dollars bought in 2000^1,7,10.

Judge savings in the currency you will spend

The question is never whether the baht is strong or weak. It is which currency your later life will be paid in. A household that will settle in Thailand carries baht costs; yen, won or dollar savings are a bet on the baht weakening, and over these 25 years that bet mostly lost. A household that will stay in Taipei, Seoul or Osaka carries costs in that currency, and baht savings are the bet. Our article on home bias and currency risk works through how to hold both without losing the match.

• Measure the corpus in baht if you will spend in baht. A balance that grew in yen or won can still have shrunk in baht: 100 yen bought 41% fewer baht in 2025 than in 2000⁷.
• Do not plan on a steady drift either way. In the five-year stretches above, the baht price of a dollar changed by anything from a fall of 4.66% a year to a rise of 1.55% a year¹. A plan that only works if the baht keeps rising, or keeps falling, is a currency bet.
• Keep near-term money in the currency it will be spent in. Money for a house in Thailand in two years has no time to recover from a bad exchange-rate year.
• Remember the cost of crossing. Every conversion costs something, and small, frequent transfers cost more; see what sending money home costs.

Reading the baht from here

Nobody can tell you where the baht will be next year, and the history above is a record, not a forecast. In 2026 alone a dollar has bought anything from ฿30.96 to ฿33.83 on a single day². What the record does support is a habit: plan in the currency you will spend, assume costs rise with that country’s inflation, and treat any gain from a currency move as a bonus rather than a foundation. If a weaker dollar is part of your story, our report on the weaker dollar and global families covers 2025 in more detail.