Indeed, the minister reels off some impressive numbers since he took over in December 2008. Thailand's economic growth is on its way towards 3.7 per cent this year after a dip last year. Unemployment, heading to a million or nearly three times the normal, was stopped at 750,000 and is now below 400,000. Consumer confidence is up, so is capacity utilisation, and the manufacturers' confidence index is back above 100 for the first time for 42 months.

Korn has some unusual qualifications, not least that he made his fortune as an investment banker before going into politics five years ago. Having graduated from Winchester, the leading British public school, where he was Head Boy, the first Asian to achieve the honour, and St John's College, Oxford, he joined Warburg. He returned to Thailand and, at the tender age of 24, set up his own brokerage and investment bank in co-operation with Jardine Fleming. When Flemings became part of JP Morgan, Korn became the Thailand country manager of the giant investment bank, in the thick of most of the government privatisation deals.

He became one of Thailand's richest men, though not, he says, in the same league as Thaksin.

In an interview at the finance ministry in Bangkok, Korn says his financial experience is 'totally advantageous' towards doing the minister's job. 'I don't see how a politician who did not have previous experience in finance could possibly do the job and give it full credit.

'Yes, political skills are of huge importance even at the ministry of finance, but if I had to choose between having had some direct experience of the financial field or have some political skills, I would definitely say the financial is more important.' Korn claims that his four years of political apprenticeship in opposition has given him the added political edge, especially in understanding the parliamentary business of passing new legislation to cope with the interlocked political, economic and social crises that constituted the grim situation when he became minister.

Korn's Oxford classmate Abhisit Vejjajiva was elected prime minister by parliament, but the government that he formed with Korn as finance minister is a coalition. Apart from the still unfolding global economic crisis hitting Thailand hard, the government had to grapple with potentially devastating domestic political and social issues, the cumulative effects of Thaksin's rule, his ousting in a coup, changes to the constitution, street demonstrations and mob rule, a prime minister forced out by the courts and the corruption sentence against Thaksin in absentia.

The minister recalls, 'We were worried about the global crisis taking unemployment to three or four or five times the normal levels. We also faced a collapse in our government revenues. We were restricted by laws which dictated how much budgetary money the government could dispense in order to maintain a level of activity in the national economy. In addition, there were huge political challenges. We could not just address the macro issues without making sure that the micro requirements were also being catered for.'

Besides a new law to allow government spending to kick start the sickly economy, and measures to restore growth, Abhisit and Korn have been working to reform the grassroots rural economy.

Korn says the government's reforms go further and deeper than anything Thaksin did. It has already put in place 'a revolutionary income guarantee scheme that is benefitting four million registered farmers. We are in the middle of doing something even more revolutionary in developing micro-finance. As a first step we announced a nationwide campaign to refinance borrowings from loan sharks, which is very prevalent and creates a serious social and economic issue. We have lined up two state banks that will provide refinancing to allow borrowers to repay the huge disadvantageous loans'.

A Bangkok newspaper declared that the government had gone 'to the rice fields to plant votes'. One measure of the government's success is that Thaksin's 'Red Shirt' demonstrators have accused Abhisit and Korn of stealing their policy clothes.

In fact, the first scheme to pump money into rural Thailand was started more than 30 years ago by another Oxford-educated princely prime minister Kukrit Pramoj. Korn comments that, 'Increasingly, rural Thais are learning that this government is working for them, and that it is possible for a government that is not Thaksin-led to not only care for their welfare but to be working to improve their quality of life. I have no doubt we will be able to wean away their perceived need to rely on Thaksin.'

So did Thaksin do anything of lasting benefit for the rural poor? Korn replies: 'Lasting, no. He gave them cash. He started off a few schemes that are worth continuing and building on, and we are doing that. We've always said without the cronyism and corruption, Thaksin would not have been a bad leader.'

So there is no cronyism or corruption in Abhisit's government? 'Not on that scale,' says Korn.

He says that the focus is changing from one man's whims and fancies to a more democratic process in which policies are decided in cabinet and questioned and passed in parliament. 'Our prime minister answers questions directly every week,' says Korn. 'Thaksin did it once a year. We take parliament seriously, as is the culture of the Democrat Party. Given what has been happening in Thai politics these past years, we feel it is of the utmost importance to rebuild parliament as a key institution.'

It makes for busy working days, he admits. 'The instructions I give to my driver are limited to no more than five destinations. My favourite destination out of the five is home, but I don't get to say that until nine or 10 pm. And then in no particular order of time spent, because it varies from period to period, will be the ministry, parliament, Government House and party headquarters.

'We had some epic parliamentary sessions in the last 12 months, especially [involving] the ministry of finance because some of the most important pieces of legislation being debated were ours. [When we presented the budget] I was in the main hall listening and answering queries right until we started at 9am. We finished at 10 am the next day.

'Economic policy is something on which we [the government] work together, with the prime minister as the boss. We have a separate economic cabinet, which meets every Wednesday, with the prime minister as the chairman and finance, industry, commerce, energy and all the economic ministries. We work as a team, collegial, but with arguments, and usually the arguments are with the ministry of finance. We hold the purse strings and our job is to make sure that there is financial discipline and that requires our saying 'no' from time to time. That does not cause any problems as long as we are able to explain our position and are ready to listen to the arguments of the potential recipients of budgetary funding.

'Within the ministry, I run the show. I have a very good working relationship with the bureaucrats bearing in mind that I am a ministry of finance brat. My dad was a career civil servant. I grew up in this ministry and know many of the civil servants from my youth, and also the younger ones from my time working in the private sector as a banker. I believe that the role of the civil servant can be of greater importance in the long term than my role as a visiting politician. I will come and I will go.'

Another of Thaksin's legacies was the politicisation of the bureaucracy, something that Korn is trying to roll back - 'Which means I am re-programming their modus operandi so as to return their ability to make decisions and judgments without political interference.' The politicians' role is to promote change, he adds. 'The civil service is just not designed psychologically or organisationally to be the agent of change. We need to work together, and effective and efficient implementation of these policies is dependent on the civil servants.'

But does Korn or his boss Abhisit really understand ordinary Thais? Aren't they just toffs or grandees, educated at British public schools and Oxford far from the everyday experience of Thai people?

He quickly rejects the charge, saying that most weekends and much of the time when parliament is not sitting he travels upcountry. The next morning he was due to get up at 4 am to go to the north. 'People upcountry know me and know what I am doing for them, increasingly so. I acknowledge very much my shortcomings with regard to instinctive understandings of rural way of life. I do not have that instinctive understanding the same way that I do for city dwellers. But that is why we have a parliamentary system with MPs who come from different backgrounds and different provinces. The system forces me to attend party meetings to spend time with MPs so that I can solicit their help to fill the gaps that I and every other cabinet member have.

'The Democrat Party sets up committees to follow key government policies so that they can provide grassroots feedback on how policies are being received and on the level of impact policies are having at grassroots level. Without the retention of that linkage, ministers in government would be very quickly isolated from the common man.'