Spatial Distribution of Bangkok City Government’s Expenditures on Infrastructure Investment

Abstract

The investments in infrastructure and services help spur Bangkok’s economy to faster growth. All the public facilities and services stimulate Bangkok’s economy to a strong competitiveness among the Southeast Asia regions which helps increase employment opportunities. Generally, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) gets the largest portion of the national government's financial support among other local governments, as the city is the primary engine of national economic growth and the center of the country’s economic activities. In these past years, it is obvious that Bangkok Metropolitan Administration keeps its interest in providing infrastructure projects far and wide under the Bangkok boundary. The proof is that the annual budgets distributed to the city building and services-related departments value a large portion of the total annual expenditures. Also, the annual budgets distributed to 50-district offices tend to rise over time. This paper attempts to take a study of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration infrastructure investment and the budget allocation criteria considering the spatial pattern of the budget distributed and political factors. The budgeting data are analyzed every two years over 13 fiscal years over the period 2008 to 2020. This study involves content analysis together with integrating statistical and geographical tools. It solely focuses on the expenditures of Bangkok city which belongs to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. The findings indicate that Bangkok Metropolitan Administration proposed strategies and population factors influence the allocation patterns and there is some location-specific pattern.