The finance minister may lie to the public if necessary to establish confidence, says Kittiratt Na-Ranong, the finance minister and deputy prime minister.
"The finance minister can lie about some things, such as export targets. But these are white lies," he said yesterday.
"If I said from the start that we couldn't grow, what would be the impact on confidence?"
Mr Kittiratt acknowledged that his pledge earlier this year that exports would grow 15% this year was a "white lie". On Tuesday, the government officially cut its export target for 2012 to 9% growth.
The target is still higher than forecast by many economists _ the national planning agency, the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), this week cut its export growth forecast for the year to 7.3% from 15.1%.
Mr Kittiratt said export targets represented "working goals" aimed at encouraging related parties to put their best efforts forward.
But the admission that the targets were known to be unrealistic from the start was criticised from some quarters.
Korn Chatikavanij, a deputy leader of the opposition Democrat Party, said he was incredulous to hear a finance minister stating that intentionally deceiving the public was acceptable.
"I cannot believe that such statements [by Mr Kittiratt] will result in stronger confidence in the economy," said Mr Korn, who served as finance minister under the Abhisit Vejjajiva government.
"Quite the contrary. This can only cause confidence to decline."
Mr Korn said exporters and economists have long dismissed the possibility of 15% export growth this year, given the weak state of the global economy and the impact on the domestic supply chain from last year's floods.
He noted that some forecasts have exports growing by as little as 3% this year. For the first half of the year, exports contracted by 2% from the same period last year.
"Personally, I cannot envision any circumstance where the finance minister may lie to the public," Mr Korn said.
In any case, Mr Kittiratt insisted that even with the lower export growth figures, the economy this year would continue to grow strongly thanks to higher domestic consumption, government spending and private investment.
He said the NESDB had only slightly reduced its own economic growth forecast for 2012, to 5.5% to 6% growth from an earlier range of 5.5% to 6.5%.
"It's a sign that the Thai economy has become more well balanced and no longer depends solely on exports," Mr Kittiratt said at an economics seminar yesterday.
He added that the government's export target of 9%, higher than the NESDB estimate, would be maintained to help encourage "all parties to work harder".
Economic balance represents the cornerstone of the Yingluck Shinawatra government's policy platform, Mr Kittiratt said, pointing to policies such as the 300-baht minimum wage and farm subsidy programmes as policies aimed at spurring domestic consumption. The government ordered minimum wages to be raised by 40% to 50% to 300 baht per day for Bangkok and six other provinces, while it plans to push daily wages up to 300 baht nationwide starting next year.
Mr Kittiratt said auto production could reach an all-time high of 2.3 million cars this year, thanks in part to government tax incentives for first-time buyers.
"Domestic purchasing power has increased, which in turn has given investors the confidence to invest to boost their production capacity, since they know that the market is there," he said.
Meanwhile, Transport Minister Jarupong Ruangsuwan said the government remains committed to new infrastructure investments that would reduce logistics costs sharply over the next few years.
The goal, he said, is to cut logistics expenses from 15.2% of gross domestic product to just 5% within five years.
Development plans running through 2020 call for more than 1.28 trillion baht in new investment in rail projects alone, with hundreds of billions of baht in additional funds planned for roads, waterways and air transport infrastructure to help improve logistics networks.
New motorways will be built across the country, with toll revenues shifted to an infrastructure fund used to pay for future expansion and maintenance expenses, he said.
The fund will also be listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand to give local investors the opportunity to invest in the projects.