Deputy Transport Minister Thaworn Senneam has ordered the Department of Airports to accelerate the 2021 investment of Bt5 billion, most of which will be spent on increasing runway length.
Trang airport’s runway will be extended from 2,200 metres to 2,990 metres at a cost of Bt1.8 billion while Buriram airport runway will be extended from 2,100 to 2,900 metres for Bt950 million.
The budget will also be spent to expand an apron at Buriram airport, and reinforce a runway and expand an apron at Surat Thani airport (Bt800 million).
Meanwhile, a runway will be improved and an apron extended at Khon Khaen airport to increase capacity from five to 12 aircraft. The department is drawing up a reference price and bidding detail.
The department has requested a budget of Bt12 billion for 2022.
Thawon also ordered the department to open Betong airport in Yala in the next couple of months.
The Trade Competition Commission said it will set up a unit to handle complaints of unfair practice in the food delivery service business.
Complaints were already being sent to the commission and would be considered according to recently issued guidelines, said chairman Sakon Varunyuwatana.
The new unit will have seven days to consider whether the complaints have merit. If so, they will be submitted to the commission’s fact-finding committee.
If a case is simple, it will proceed immediately as per the legal process. If a case is complicated, the commission will set up a subpanel to investigate the evidence for 90 days, extendable by another 15 days.
By The Washington Post · William Booth, Michael Birnbaum · WORLD, EUROPE
LONDON – According to sources, Brexit talks are “on a knife’s edge.” It’s “the make or break moment.” It’s “down to the wire.” It’s “crunchtime.”
Sound familiar? It is. Even Brexit obsessives have lost track of how many “crunch times” have come and gone over these many months and years of negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union.
All that to say that Brexit talks have still not concluded. Negotiators met in the London over the weekend and worked until late at night trying to strike a deal. Now the two sides are back in Brussels, at it again.
British and European teams are struggling to craft a free-trade agreement that will allow the two sides to continue the orderly movement of goods and services across the English Channel.
If they fail to strike a deal, then Britain and Europe will enforce new customs duties, tariffs, border checks, and quotas on goods, increasing prices and fully ending the era of the free, frictionless trade.
They have 24 days to make a deal.
Specifically, the two sides are arguing over European access to fish in British waters, an emotional issue that taps into issues of sovereignty, even though the fisheries sector accounts for a tiny fraction of Britain’s gross domestic product.
There have been suggestions that European access to fish in British seas could be slowly reduced. Should the transition period be three years (a British proposal) or 10 years (a French proposal)? Stay tuned.
The Europeans, too, are pressing to maintain a “level playing field,” to stop Britain from undercutting worker protections or granting large state subsidies to British businesses, potentially giving the U.K. firms unfair advantages.
The political press is reporting a “final push” this week, but in reality the sides have been pushing for a very long time.
Britain officially left the European Union in January, though it didn’t quite leave. What it did was begin an 11-month transition period, which ends midnight on Dec. 31. The transition period that was granted to give the sides time to craft a trade deal, to avoid last-minute chaos and uncertainty. Numerous deadlines have come and gone.
How are things going? Not good.
“The news is very downbeat,” Ireland’s foreign secretary Simon Coveney told Ireland’s state broadcaster RTE, who described the mood as “very gloomy.”
The Irish minister said, “I’d like to be giving more positive news but at the moment these negotiations seem stalled, and the barriers to progress are still very much in place.”
The British Foreign Office was a little less gloomy. Minister James Cleverly told the BBC the U.K. would keep negotiating “for as long as we have available time or until we get an agreement.” He said negotiations “often go to the last minute of the last day.”
“We are a global player, we are one of the biggest economies in the world, we are a real prize for many countries,” Cleverly said. “I think if E.U. recognise this they will see that actually making a few small but significant concessions can get this deal done and that will be in their interest and in our interest.”
Diplomats in Brussels, confronted with a spiraling series of crises, say that Brexit was long ago supplanted as the most burning issue they are facing.
Nor is it even the trickiest negotiation they are facing in Brussels this week, amid acrimonious talks with two of the European Union’s own members, Hungary and Poland. The two countries, whose commitment to democracy is increasingly shaky, have vetoed the entire $2 trillion E.U. budget because the other E.U. members want to make receiving funds conditional on adhering to the rule of law.
Now E.U. ambassadors are receiving briefings almost every day from the bloc’s top negotiator, Michel Barnier, a lanky former French politician who has sounded increasingly glum about the prospects for the talks.
They are fast running out of time, since any deal would need to be approved by E.U. leaders and a handful of parliaments before Dec. 31.
“It was always going to go beyond any reasonable deadline,” said one finger-drumming senior E.U. diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail frustrations with the British approach.
E.U. officials familiar with the negotiations said that there was an agreement among themselves to halt talks Wednesday, regardless of their outcome, although such deadlines could easily be bargaining tactics.
Another senior diplomat said Monday that differences remain on fisheries, rules about state aid to industries, and which body will enforce the deal – a summary that could easily have described most of the entire last year of negotiations.
“If that sounds familiar to you, it is because there has been no decisive progress made so far,” the diplomat said of the last few days of discussions, briefing reporters on the talks under ground rules of anonymity.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plan to speak Monday evening. A Saturday night conversation lasted an hour but proved fruitless in the end: they told their negotiators to keep negotiating.
A downcast von der Leyen came out after the conversation to tell reporters that many differences remained.
“Whoever has a crystal ball and is able to predict how first-of-their kind negotiations will unfold and conclude deserves a job as scriptwriter in the movie industry or to write novels,” von der Leyen’s spokesman, Eric Mamer, told reporters on Monday.
Will Jennings, a professor of political science at the University of Southampton, said it was “very difficult” to know what was going on in negotiations as “both sides are giving briefings that tell different stories.”
He said it was a “strange political moment” because “it’s incredibly salient for key decision-makers” but “the public seemed almost to have moved on.”
He said that there was a tendency, with E.U. and British politicians, “to take things to the brink and the last minute . . . like students handing in term papers” but it was also difficult to know whether the government really wants a deal. “The notions around Brexit are so wrapped up around sovereignty and taking back control” that there are “huge tensions around the integrity of Brexit and the grubby compromises of international negotiations.”
Jennings said Johnson wasn’t merely talking tough to appease some of the hardcore Brexiteers in his own party, although they are applying pressure. “The government is led by key advocates of the Leave vote, not the softer side of the Brexit coin,” he said.
Brexiteers outside the party have been applying pressure, too. Nigel Farage, a media personality and former head of U.K. Independence Party, tweeted that there was “no reasonable negotiation on offer,” as he disparaged French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Either we cave to Barnier and Macron or walk away,” Farage said.
Govt confident economy will cross 4% growth mark, central bank not so sure
EconDec 07. 2020Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow
By The Nation
The government is confident the economy will expand no less than 4 per cent next year, said Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow.
Supattanapong, who also doubles as energy minister, said the government will continue to seek more measures to lift the economy, which is struggling in the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Earlier, the Bank of Thailand’s governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput said he expected economic growth next year to be below 4 per cent as the tourism and export sectors may not recover fully.
Speaking at a separate event, Sethaphut said the bank was ready to control the rising baht to mitigate the impact on the export sector as well as execute a monetary policy to support economic growth.
Economic growth this year is expected to be better than the earlier estimate of minus 8 per cent, he said, adding that the bank will revise its growth forecast for 2020.
He said growth next year will be less than 4 per cent as the number of foreign tourists is unlikely to reach the previously estimated 9 million.
However, he expects the figures for consumption to enter the positive territory next year.
Earlier, the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking predicted that the Thai economy will grow 2 to 4 per cent next year, while exports will grow 3 to 5 per cent.
Tax collection by the Excise Department will be boosted by blockchain technology from next year, said director general Lavaron Sangsnit.
Blockchain will be introduced early next year for taxation of imports, then for exported oil products in the first quarter.
The department is seeking ways to boost revenue without raising taxes by adopting new technology to enhance collection systems, Lavaron said.
The use of blockchain will enable the departments of Excise, Customs, and Revenue to share information on a real-time basis on taxable products, making it harder to evade tax, he added.
Exported oil products account for two-thirds (Bt200 billion) of annual excise tax revenue, said the director general.
Excise tax collected in the first two months of fiscal year 2021 were slightly up on the annual target of Bt600 billion, he added.
Former Rangsit University dean of the economic faculty, Anusorn Tamajai, has warned the Thai government to prepare for a new US trade policy under President Joe Biden who will take office next month.
His comments came after a group of nine US senators introduced a resolution to support the pro-democracy movement in Thailand and called on the Thai government to listen to the people’s demands and end crackdown on protesters who assemble peacefully.
Thai-American senator Tammy Duckworth was among the nine members of Congress who introduced the resolution. Another was Senator Bob Menendez, who has played a key role in proposing US trade sanctions against Latin American countries accused of violating human rights and freedom of the press.
Thai police have so far filed lese-majeste charges against 17 protest leaders, but the draconian law has been viewed by rights groups as a major source of human rights abuse in Thailand as it imposes a jail term of up to 15 years for those convicted of insulting the Thai monarch.
The government had not used the lese majeste law in the past two years, but PM Prayut Chan-o-cha recently gave police the green light to resume enforcement of this tough law.
Anusorn said the Biden administration was expected to focus more on human rights and labour rights in dealing with trading partners, such as Thailand.
Biden is expected to introduce a rule-based system to replace Trump’s deal-based system, he said.
The new US administration is also expected to reintroduce non-discrimination and national treatment for international trade policy.
The US Trade Representative Office also is expected to use non-tariff barriers against China and other Asian countries, he said.
President Trump has imposed high tariff rates against China and other countries and he has been dubbed “Tariff Man”.
Although the trade war may ease under a Biden administration, it would not completely go away as US wants to curb China’s global influence, Anusorn predicted.
He also forecast the introduction next year of Diem, formerly known as Libra, which is a permissioned blockchain-based payment system proposed by the American social media company, Facebook. The payment system will include cryptocurrency whose value will be tied to the US dollar. This so-called stable coin will have a significant impact on the global financial markets where central banks play a key role, although it will have limited use. The coin is said to be used as a substitute for the US dollar and euro currency with limited scope for financial transactions. The digital currencies will have an adverse impact on the role of central banks globally, Anusorn added.
Investors have been advised to follow key domestic and international developments as a mix of these would impact the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index, the baht and gold price next week.
The baht on Friday closed at 30.15 to the US dollar on Friday, strengthening from 30.29 last week due to mass sell-offs of the greenback amid hopes of a Covid-19 vaccine and the US Federal Reserve’s signs of quantitative easing.
A strategist at Kasikorn Research Centre expected the baht next week to move between 30.00 and 30.40 to the dollar, advising investors to follow the Bank of Thailand (BOT)’s measures to shepherd the baht, foreign funds flows, the domestic political situation and the Covid-19 outbreak.
Among international factors, he advised investors to follow the US inflation rate in November, the US weekly jobless claims, the US consumer confidence index in December, the European Central Bank meeting, the EU Summit and China’s economic data for November.
The SET Index on Friday closed at 1,449.83, up 0.84 per cent from the previous week, while transactions amounted to Bt88.5 billion, down 8.33 per cent from the previous week, on the back of positive news of a Covid-19 vaccine, rising oil price after Opec+ decided to extend the cap on oil production and the BOT’s move to amend regulations on eligibility criteria for regulatory capital.
The Market for Alternative Investment closed at 331.18, up 0.99 per cent from the previous week.
An analyst at Kasikorn Securities expected the SET next week to move between 1,430 and 1,485, advising investors to follow the Covid-19 outbreak, Thailand’s political situation, the Covid-19 crisis, Brexit and the Opec+ meeting, the ECB meeting, US-China relations and Brexit.
Among international factors, he advised following US consumers’ and producers’ price indices in November, the euro-zone and Japan’s third-quarter gross domestic product and China’s economic data in November.
Gold price on Friday closed at US$1,842.02 per ounce, while in Thailand it closed at Bt26,390 per baht weight.
An analyst at YLG Bullion International said there was limited upside for the metal amid the conflict between the US and China.
He advised investors to buy gold when its price rises over the support line between $1,815 and $1,829 per ounce as the price would rise to the resistance line between $1,847 and $1,864 per ounce.
“Meanwhile, investors should pay attention to their investment, as the Thailand Futures Exchange market is closed until Monday,” he said.
U.S. stocks climbed to all-time highs and Treasury yields jumped after a report showing U.S. employment gains slowed in November bolstered expectations for more federal stimulus.
All major indexes for U.S. equities – the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Russell 2000 and the Nasdaq Composite index – closed at records. Such synchronized highs were last seen in January 2018. The dollar posted its biggest weekly decline in five, while the yield on the 10-year Treasury note reached the highest in nine months.
“One of the recurring themes this year is the resiliency of the market, it’s been amazing and impressive,” said John Porter, head of equities at Mellon Investments.
Labor Department figures showed nonfarm payrolls increased by a less-than-forecast 245,000 from the prior month, as the unemployment rate dipped 0.2 percentage point to 6.7%. President-elect Joe Biden called the report “grim” and said it shows “there’s no time to lose” for Congress to pass a new Covid relief bill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there’s momentum building toward a compromise fiscal stimulus plan, though Republicans complained about the scale of aid to states included in the bipartisan proposal that’s become the best chance yet for a deal.
“The market is betting that we’ll get a relief package soon,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co. “If anything, this weaker report will get them to agree on a package sooner rather than later.”
Elsewhere, oil climbed as OPEC+ reached an agreement to ease its output cuts next year more gradually than previously planned. Bitcoin declined for the first time in three days after flirting this week with $20,000.
Energy companies led the Stoxx Europe 600 index higher. Asian equities closed mostly higher.
Here are the main moves in markets:
– – –
– The S&P 500 Index climbed 0.9% to 3,699.13 as of 4:01 p.m. New York time, the highest on record.
– The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.8% to 30,217.77, the highest on record with the biggest advance in more than a week.
– The Nasdaq Composite index gained 0.7% to 12,464.23, the highest on record.
– The Stoxx Europe 600 index increased 0.6% to 394.04, the highest in more than nine months.
– The MSCI All-Country World Index rose 0.7% to 633, the highest on record.
– – –
– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot index dipped 0.1% to 1,129.43, the lowest in more than two years.
– The euro fell 0.1% to $1.2128.
– The British pound declined 0.1% to $1.3435.
– The Japanese yen weakened 0.3% to 104.17 per dollar, the largest drop in more than a week.
– – –
– The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose six basis points to 0.97%, the highest in more than three weeks.
– Germany’s 10-year yield increased one basis point to -0.55%.
– Britain’s 10-year yield gained three basis points to 0.351%.
– – –
– West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.9% to $46.05 a barrel, the highest in nine months.
Wall Street keeps pushing into China as Washington balks
EconDec 05. 2020A monitor displays Alibaba Group Holding signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York on Oct. 13, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Michael Nagle.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg
A year into China’s big bang opening of its financial markets, Wall Street has ever more to lose from a growing consensus in Washington over reining in Beijing.
It’s a risk they’re willing to take.
A star-studded cast of global banks and fund houses have increased their presence in China this year and a record $212 billion of foreign funds have poured into Chinese bonds and stocks. Alongside have come a myriad of measures from Washington aimed at decoupling the U.S. from China, an issue that’s drawn bipartisan support given widespread alarm about the Asian nation’s rising influence in global affairs.
The latest U.S. salvo was fired on Wednesday with the passage of legislation that could lead to Chinese companies — including behemoths like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. — getting kicked off American exchanges. The turbulence hasn’t swayed global finance from the opportunity to capture a share of profits that are estimated to swell to $47 billion in investment banking alone by 2026.
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are now pushing to take full control of their China ventures, while fund giants such as BlackRock Inc have been given the greenlight to set up shop.
“There’s a lot of risk and uncertainty about future policy directions” said Chen Zhiwu, director of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. “But on the other hand, wow, the market is so big so some people are still willing to go in for the potential high gain at the cost of being exposed to a lot of high risk.”
All signs point to Congress continuing the confrontation under President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, with the risk of the finance industry becoming deeper enmeshed. Biden’s pick for national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has questioned why the U.S. should prioritize opening China for the likes of Goldman Sachs, arguing that the competition between the two powers will turn on how “effectively each country stewards its national economy and shapes the global economy.”
At the same time, Beijing has vowed to continue easing barriers to its capital markets. Guo Shuqing, the chairman of the China Banking & Insurance Regulator Commission, wrote in a recent article that the fortunes of a nation are “often closely tied to its financial power” and that it will seek to actively participate in shaping international rules.
The opening isn’t some act to “reconcile” with the U.S. to defuse tensions but driven by self interest, said Jessie Guo, head of equity research at China Merchants Securities HK Co. The nation will keep the doors open as it pivots toward a “dual circulation” strategy in which the domestic market becomes the main growth driver, supplemented by foreign demand, she said.
The push has so far paid off for China in a tumultuous year, when its economy outperformed major rivals after the nation successfully contained the coronavirus.
A September survey by HSBC Qianhai Securities showed that almost two-thirds of more than 900 global institutional investors and major corporations are planning to increase their investment in China by an average of 25% over the next year. Investors in North America stood out as the only ones saying they will hold off on increasing their exposure to mainland Chinese corporate bonds and commercial paper.
Approvals to take major control in China have continued for foreign banks, asset managers and payment clearing networks. Firms including Goldman and Credit Suisse Group have ambitious hiring plans in China, and argue they can boost investments in the country since they are better able to control where the money is being put to use. Analysts at Goldman at the end of last year estimated profits in the Chinese brokerage sector could reach $47 billion by 2026, up from $10 billion in 2018.
Regulators have also given overseas traders access to futures and options, expanded a U.S.-style registration system for IPOs and scrapped quotas on foreign inflows.
That’s being noticed in the halls of Washington. A Congressional commission this week warned that China’s financial opening was part of a “calculated strategy” to secure foreign investments and use them to shore up the domestic economy.
U.S. lawmakers this week approved legislation that could lead to Chinese companies getting delisted unless they allow a review of their financial audits, albeit with a three-year phase-in period. Sanctions on Chinese firms connected to the military triggered JPMorgan to exclude new bonds from impacted companies from its widely followed debt indexes, underscoring how the U.S. can affect index-tracking investors around the world.
Banks also face a deadline this month for ensuring that they aren’t doing business with Hong Kong and Chinese officials sanctioned over their role in the political crackdown on the financial hub. Lenders, including major Chinese banks, have already taken steps to comply.
Banks and asset managers have to do more due diligence to avoid the risks of servicing sanctioned Chinese firms such as helping them to list or to raise capital, according to Benjamin Quinlan, chief executive officer at Quinlan & Associates, a strategy consultant in Hong Kong.
“That means having much stricter ‘know your customer’ and onboarding controls,” he said. “The reality is the biggest fines in the world are for sanction breaches with the U.S.”
China’s response so far has been to continue down the path of further opening, though the toughest reforms are yet to come. China’s strategy to make the yuan a global currency has so far come up short, with its share in payments falling to 1.66% as of October from 1.94% at the end of last year.
Capital controls and the uncertainty of repatriating funds remain a key hurdle for global investors as do a lack of transparency in rule-making. The abrupt cancellation of Ant Group’s record IPO in early November sent shudders through the markets.
That hasn’t swayed global firms such as Goldman Sachs. President John Waldron said in October that the U.S. bank is still waiting on further guidance on how to apply for a 100% stake. He also proposed further liberalization measures including reduced constraints on outbound capital flows, allowing foreign firms to act as market makers in China’s bond connect and further alignment with international regulatory standards.
Henry Fernandez, chairman of MSCI Inc., said in a recent Bloomberg TV interview that the opening shows China “is recognizing that in order to have that leadership in the world, economically, politically and financially, they need to embrace openness and become one of the largest countries in the world in all these markets.”
With the incoming Biden administration, “hopefully we can avoid a capital war, which can be devastating,” Fernandez said.
Thailand’s inflation to hit 1.2%, if economy expands as expected
EconDec 05. 2020Pimchanok Vonkorpon, director-general of the Trade Policy and Strategy Office
By The Nation
Thailand’s inflation rate is expected to hit 1.2 per cent next year, said Pimchanok Vonkorpon, director-general of the Trade Policy and Strategy Office.
The inflation will be within the range of 0.7 and 1.7 per cent next year assuming the economy expands between 3.5 per cent and 4.5 per cent, the Dubai crude oil price is between US$40 and $50 per barrel and the baht lies between Bt30 and Bt32 per US dollar.
The inflation rate this year has been forecast to contract by 0.87 per cent, she added.
Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow 
Lavaron Sangsnit 
US President-elect Joe Biden 
A monitor displays Alibaba Group Holding signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York on Oct. 13, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Michael Nagle. 
Pimchanok Vonkorpon, director-general of the Trade Policy and Strategy Office 
SootinClaimon.Com 