The Thai bond market has grown rapidly in recent years after the 1997's economic crisis. To help support cash-strapped financial institutions, in June1998 the government issued government bonds for the first time in the decade. The total amount of government bonds issued under this program was THB 500 billion and this has opened a new era for the Thai bond market. The government continued to issue bonds since then with the primary objective to finance budget deficit resulted from the crisis. The substantial amount of new government bonds coupled with successively downtrend of interest rates have contributed to the robust of the bond market as evidenced by a significant increase in both market size and trading volume. The outstanding value of total bond market increased from THB 547 billion in 1996 to 498 issues worth THB 1,507 billion at the end of 2001. Trading volume in the secondary market rose from a daily average of only THB 822 million in 1996 to THB 6,472 million in 2001.