Arbitrage at its best

It has been over 5 weeks since I arrived in Thailand and there is no doubt that electronic items are definitely cheap as compared to India when it comes to laptops, medium and top end mobile phones, cameras and TVs.

I recently went to the Bangkok International Airport to drop someone who was going back to Mumbai. At the Bangkok International Airport, even a non-passenger can enter the airport building, can reach the check-in areas of airlines, roam around inside the airport and is stopped just before the immigration check. Nevertheless, both of us went to airline check-in counter. Next to us was the check-in counter for the Calcutta flight for the same airline. And I saw a big group of about 30 people there, each carrying a set of LCD TV! Now, this amazed me that how on earth can one need so many TVs back home?! I carried my curiosity back to my place and forgot about it.

After having a chat with someone here, I came to know about this “arbitrage” which is going on here. This is how the arrangement works. Same model of LCD TV costs around INR 75,000 in India and in Thailand it is around THB 30,000 (~INR 42,000; 1 THB (Thai Baht) = 1.4 INR approx). people buy TV here, pay a minimal duty of 2,500 in India, take this to “grey” market in metro cities of the country and sell it there for around INR 60,000 and receive cash for the same. The difference is almost sufficient to get a Bangkok return ticket from India! The dealer in India can easily sell the same set at a better margin now :)

Now that explains those 30 TVs being taken checked in :P