Commerce Minister Apiradi Tantraporn said Thailand’s trade with the US this year was expected to grow by about one per cent, worth US$25 billion, while next year is expected to see higher growth at 3 per cent. However, Thailand needs to closely monitor new president Donald Trump’s policies because if they are too stringent, the US economy could experience a slowdown.
Apiradi said that Trump’s policies could have a positive and negative impact on global trading. On the positive side, the policy to lower the corporate tax and personal income tax would lead to more disposable income, while his pledge to boost gross domestic product growth to 3.5 per cent annually should stimulate domestic and international trade.
However, any protectionist policy could cause difficulties for trading. He said trading partners, including Thailand, may need to make adjustments and be prepared to face non-tariff barriers and stringent intellectual property rights protection.
However, the Thai ministry does not foresee the US imposing non-tariff barriers that could harm global trading, as it would be in breach of World Trade Organisation regulations.
Amid expected stringent intellectual property rules (IPR), Thailand will continue to raise its IP standard and improve development of IPR protection under the digital and creative economy, she added
Despite uncertainty over the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) following Trump’s victory, Thailand would continue to study the impact and benefits of the TPP and consider carefully whether to join the pact in the future.
Thailand will continue its trade policies through strategic partnership, as it is highly flexible and has high efficiency to promote not only trade, but other forms of cooperation and investment growth.
Malee Choklumlerd, director-general at the International Trade Promotion Department, said the US is unlikely to impose higher tariffs on Thai products, especially food, as it is reliant largely on food imports. For instance, Americans consume a lot of tuna and shrimp each year, while their production is very small and not capable of meeting domestic demand.
The US closed down two tuna factories last year, while there is also high demand for tuna.
The US remains Thailand’s largest export market, excluding Asean. Last year, shipments to the US were worth $24.05 billion, accounting for 11.2 per cent of total export value. Major export products to the US are computers and parts, rubber products, jewellery and ornaments, electric appliances, vehicles and parts, garment, seafood, canned and processed fruits.

The association expects investment of Bt70 billion during these two years, down from Bt100 billion yearly during some years in the past, TSCA president Wallaya Chirathivat said.
The investments were being made both on the opening of new shopping centres and facelifts to existing malls. The new developments have been mainly in Bangkok, other major cities, and border provinces to attract shoppers from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
She said Thailand’s shopping malls currently occupied 18 million square metres of ground floor area (GFA), which was expected to increase to about 18.7 million square metres next year. TSCA members currently operate 91 shopping malls occupying 7.6 million square metres in GFA, about 42 per cent of the total.
Wallaya said the investments made by local mall developers would usually be in line with the internal rate of return, which had declined from 12-14 per cent about three or four years ago to between 7 and 12 per cent today.
“We [mall developers] invest for the long term. However, the world economy has not fully recovered. Thailand is also changing its policy to focus on promoting the tourism sector and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises, and such policies will attract more investments from the private sector, especially tourism-related businesses.”
She added that the shopping-centre industry generated 16 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, making it the second-largest contributor after the industrial sector. Tourism is third, generating about 12 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Wallaya said average spending by individual foreign tourists was about Bt5,000 per day, and only Bt1,200 or 24 per cent was for shopping. Meanwhile, Thais spend about Bt170 billion abroad every year, of which Bt51 billion is for shopping.
“We [TSCA] are committed to our vision of driving the economy and supporting Thailand becoming No 1 in Asean and the ultimate destination for shopping in the region, comparable to world-class tourist destinations like Hong Kong and Singapore,” she said.
“We are setting a three-year [2016-18] business development plan for TSCA members in line with the government’s policies, focusing on tourism, which has a major role in [generating] the country’s revenue.”
She said the number of inbound travellers and tourism revenue had increased every year.
According to the Department of Tourism, the number of foreign tourists to Thailand was almost 30 million last year, up 20.4 per cent over 2014. Tourism revenue was about Bt2.33 trillion last year.
“After the full opening of the Asean Economic Community, a large number of tourists and investors from around the world will enter the region, resulting in intense competition among Asean member countries. Therefore, we need to accelerate the development of our distinguished shopping centres to strengthen Thailand’s [ability] to compete in both the regional and global trade arenas,” Wallaya said.

If approved by the Cabinet, the ministry will transfer the Bt15-billion budget to TOT.
TOT president Montchai Noosong said yesterday that TOT was already drafting the technical specifications for the project’s equipment.
A TOT source said the budget would be divided into three parts – Bt9 billion for the installation of wireless and fixed0line access points in the 24,700 villages, Bt3 billion for three years of network maintenance and Bt3 billion for the installation of free Wi-Fi in the villages.
According to its original plan, TOT will install only the wireline network in the villages as specified by the ministry.
Wirelines will still be the main network. The wireless service will run on TOT’s 2.3-gigahertz spectrum.
All network assets from the project would belong to the ministry, Montchai said.
The ministry opened bidding for the project midyear but aborted it last month, citing that TOT, the only bidder, had failed to provide sufficient technical details.
However, last week the ministry decided to mandate TOT for the project.

Paiboon Nalinthrangkurn, chief executive officer of Tisco Securities and chairman |of the Investment Analysts Association, told the seminar organised by the Federation |of Thai Capital Market Organisations that Trump’s policy to rebuild the US economy would result in more |fiscal debt.
This might prompt the US Federal Reserve to raise its policy interest rate more than twice a year. This should be seen in 2018.
Rising rates will reduce interest in the bond market but the stock market will begin outperforming.
Investors will move their money from the debt to the equity market.
All in all, this is a good time for the military-led government to mobilise funds to support infrastructure projects before the general election at the end of next year, Paiboon said.
Surong Bulakul, chairman of the Thai Listed Companies Association (TLCA), said trade flows would change significantly under Trump’s reign, and Thai traders must learn to deal with the new pattern.
He said the government must rapidly implement the Thailand 4.0 model to make the domestic economy stronger and offset the impact from the change of trade flows.
Thailand has high exposure to exporting foods to the US. Thailand’s agencies should be cautious in negotiating with the US over such matters because Trump will seek ways for the US to gain in competitiveness, he said.
Benjarong Suwankiri, head of TMB Analytics, sees less chance for any free-trade agreement between Thailand and the US because Trump’s “American first” policy is a clear signal that he wants to reduce external dependence.
His fiscal policy will drive up inflation in the US, and this will influence interest rates.
As trade patterns are |changing, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will be the crucial agreement for Asia, and Thailand should focus more on the RCEP to drive trade activities in the region, he said.
Kobsak Pootrakool, vice minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, said that since the relationship between the US and the global market will not be good, Asia should integrate more to realise opportunities as the investment destination of the global market.
Paiboon said the US was not competitive as a production base in many areas, and 70 per cent of its economy depended on the service sector.
The returns from the service sector are better than from manufacturing, he said.
At a separate event, Ittirit Kinglake, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, said Trump’s victory was not that big a worry because Thai tourism did not depend much on the US market. Instead, the key sources of arrivals are Asia, Europe and Oceania.
Andrew Gulbrandson, head of research and consulting at JLL Thailand, does not expect Thailand’s real-estate investors and market to feel any impact from the US election, at least in the short term.
Unlike Hong Kong’s dollar, the Thai baht is not directly pegged to the US currency and has remained fairly stable over the past several months.
It is unlikely that Thailand’s real-estate pricing will become more attractive to international investors than it was before the US election.
If there is a sustained devaluation in the US dollar, such as seen in the UK’s pound after the Brexit vote over the summer, the United States may become a more attractive investment destination for Thai real-estate players than in the past years .
However, because of a high level of uncertainty and the fact that no new policy directions should take place until at |least the first quarter of next year, it may be premature |for any investors to rush |into the market, Gulbrandson said.
“Having said that, demand for real estate in all markets is highly dependent upon macroeconomic conditions.
“As such, it will be important to keep a close eye on |how policies and programmes enacted by the new US administration impact global markets, particularly in the case of China, which is one of Thailand’s major trading partners and a growing source of real-estate investment into Thailand,” he said.
Emerging-country stock markets and currencies are, in the near term, expected to underperform those of developed countries, particularly the US after Trump’s victory, Trinity Securities said in a research note.

At the same time, the city is pushing for renewable energy to reduce the use of the dirty sources in the coming decades.
Yulin, the northernmost prefecture-level city of Shaanxi province, has recently cooperated with Japan and some Western countries including Germany to research and develop green-technology equipment, a source from Yulin Municipality who asked not to be named told The Nation recently.
The city’s ambitious goal of becoming a regional centre of energy equipment and innovation was highlighted at the 11th “Yulin International Coal Energy Equipment and Technology Expo” hosted by Yulin Municipal Party Committee in late September. At the event, foreign and local companies and technology institutes displayed and exchanged their energy innovations.
“There is 1 billion renminbi of wealth beneath every square kilometre of land,” Yulin Mayor Zhang Haifeng said in a recent press interview. “The potential valve of the underground mineral resources has exceeded 40 trillion renminbi, which takes up one-third of the total value in China and 95 per cent of that in Shaanxi province.
“Yulin has become … one of the vital alternative-energy bases of China in the 21st century.”
According to the source, the Chinese state has encouraged Shaanxi University of Science and Technology and Yulin National High-Tech Industrial Park, which specialises in the energy-chemical, new-energy and equipment-manufacturing industries, to conduct research on green technology and coal equipment.
The advanced equipment arising from such R&D, the source said, will initially be tested and used domestically before being exported to overseas markets.
Yulin claims to be the largest production base of gas-purification equipment in Asia and China’s largest methanol production base. In addition, the city possesses 48 kinds of minerals including salt and coal, enabling it to be the national base of the energy-chemical industry. Zhang said its estimated coal reserves totalled 280 billion tonnes and proven reserves of 150 billion tonnes.
Besides coal and gas, which are considered dirty energy sources because of their massive carbon-dioxide emissions, the city invests in alternative, renewable energy in the form of the photovoltaic industry.
Since 2010, Yulin’s state-owned Jingbian Photovoltaic Industrial Park, a 5-billion-yuan (Bt25-billion) project with capacity to produce half a megawatt, accounting for 17 per cent of the province’s electricity, has confirmed the state’s attempt to push for clean energy along with the use of coal. By 2020, the park aims to increase the capacity to 2MW, according to Liu Huaicheng, a key figure in the project.
Despite the project’s initial high cost and low profit, he said it would generate a good return on investment within 10 years.
In addition, to accelerate the city’s economic growth, Yulin has set its sights on becoming a tourism destination under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative by means of comprehensive cooperation with countries along those land and sea routes, Zhang said.
The president’s economic paradigm, which aims to cooperate and improve trade and relations with Asean, Central Asian and European countries, not only provides an important platform of mutual development for countries along the routes, but also bring new development opportunities for China’s western region, the mayor said.
The city will also create a tourism brand for Yulin and accelerate the construction of facilities to service its more than 1,600 places of interest. These include the prehistoric Shimao site, the ruins of Tongwan, the only city of the ancient Xiongnu people ever found, and the first town of the Great Wall, he said.
“With its deep culture roots, rich tourism resources and diverse ethnic customs, we will further develop the spirit and connotation of the city’s role as an ancient frontier city, its deserts, yellow-earth culture and Communist culture,” he said.

Bangjongjitt Angsusingh, director-general of the department, said it had opened ThaiCommerceStore.com for farmers to promote rice sales. It is available both to farmers who have their own websites and those who use only social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to link to the Web.
She said the project should increase distribution channels for farmers. Forty farmers have already been supported through this website.
Nukul Samakayanusorn, vice president of the Thai Wholesale and Retail Association, said his group would provide a free channel for farmers to sell their rice at more than 366 outlets of 70 retailers and wholesalers in 43 provinces.
He said almost 1,000 traders were expected to join the project to help farmers.

BOOKING.COM LAUNCHES
TRAVEL AGENT PLATFORM

Booking.com, which connects travellers with a wide choice of places to stay, yesterday announced that it was piloting “Booking.com for Travel Agents”, the first iteration of a new platform designed specifically with the unique needs of travel agents in mind.
The firm says the platform features a suite of easy-to-use tools to empower travel-industry professionals to make and manage accommodation reservations for their clients with Booking.com.
Booking.com for Travel Agents is an extension of the company’s Affiliate Partner Programme and leverages technology and infrastructure being developed for “Booking.com for Business”.
Travel Agents who join the platform will be eligible for similar partner benefits to what all Booking.com affiliate partners enjoy.
Not only does the Booking.com for Travel Agents platform enable travel agents to view and manage all customer reservations on one handy dashboard, it also includes a tab of customisable reports that monitor individual client bookings, as well as providing them with a convenient breakdown of their earnings over time.

TERM EXTENSION
FOR NBTC CHIEF

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission board yesterday agreed to extend the term of secretary-general Takorn Tantasith by another five years from the expiration date of his current term on January 4, 2017 .

The MPC took the view that monetary policy should remain accommodative while it stands ready to utilise an appropriate mix of available policy tools to ensure that monetary conditions are conducive to the economic recovery, while ensuring financial stability, he said.
The committee saw the need to preserve policy space given that the Thai economy would continue to face uncertainties, particularly the fragile global economic recovery and the monetary-policy directions of major advanced economies that might induce greater capital flow and exchange-rate volatility.
The MPC assessed that the Thai economy continued to expand at a pace close to the previous assessment, despite greater downside risks on both domestic and external fronts, Jaturong said.
The inflation rate is expected to increase, but might return to the target level later than expected because of supply-side factors.
Meanwhile, monetary conditions remain accommodative and conducive to the economic recovery, hence the committee decided to keep the policy rate unchanged at yesterday’s meeting.
Gross domestic product is projected by the panel to recover at a pace close to the previous assessment.
Exports of industrial goods have expanded more than expected, while private investment remained low despite some improvements seen in certain export-oriented manufacturing sectors, Jaturong said.
At the same time, tourism is expected to slow down as a result of the government’s measures to curb so-called zero-dollar tours.
Private consumption has continued to expand, although some activities might slow down temporarily, while public expenditure continues to be an important growth driver.
According to the committee’s assessment, the Thai economy remains on a recovery path, but downside risks have increased from the number of Chinese tourists, which could turn out to be lower than the previous projection, as well as uncertainties stemming from political developments in the United States and Europe.
Meanwhile, concerns over the European and Chinese financial sectors continue to warrant close monitoring.
In the MPC’s assessment, financial stability remains sound and able to provide a cushion against potential shocks and volatility in financial markets.
However, there remain pockets of risk that warrant close monitoring, such as the deterioration in loan quality of some business sectors and search-for-yield behaviour under the prolonged low-interest-rate environment.

The TGIA launched the programme in a bid to assist farmers affected by the falling price of Hom Mali rice. TGIA president Anon Vangvasu said yesterday that the gift sets could be given to customers who purchase insurance policies or be distributed to employees of the insurance companies.
The association targets a purchase of 500 tonnes of Hom Mali under the |project. Anon said the gift sets would be ideal for New Year’s and other special occasions.
The association will contact farmers in Surin province to buy rice at a rate including the cost of transportation to Bangkok.
Insurance companies can order Hom Mali rice sets in three sizes: 1 kilogram for Bt40, 2kg for Bt64, and 5kg for Bt160.