The impact of foreign direct investment and macroeconomic variables on commercial banks performance in Thailand

Abstract

Role of commercial banks in economic as financial intermediary was previously researched in various perspective and framework, especially to investigated factors effecting commercial bank performance. This study extends the literature by investigating the impact of foreign direct investment and macroeconomic variables that stimulate commercial bank profit in Thailand, expressed through return on asset (ROA), on three commercial bank groups. This study used secondary data of foreign direct investment and macroeconomic variables from Bank of Thailand for the period of year 2007 to 2019. Multiple regression method is used to examine the effect of determinant factors: FDI, GDP Growth, Inflation, Real Lending Interest, Unemployment and Exchange rate. Resulted from regression found that there is no significant relationship between FDI and commercial bank ROA. While two macroeconomic variables have a significant relationship to commercial bank ROA: Inflation is positively related and Real Lending Interest is negatively related. The resulted also stated that smaller commercial banks affected by external factors more than large commercial banks. From the empirical resulted, it provides a guideline to commercial banks in Thailand that they should focus on inflation rate and real lending interest rate to maximizing their profit.