Le Van Banh, director of the Vietnamese Department of Agro-Fisheries Processing and Salt Production, said this large sell-off by Thailand would certainly have an impact on the global rice market following the law of supply and demand, as well as on Vietnam’s rice market.

However, the impact on Vietnam’s rice exports would not be significant, at least in the short term, Banh said.

He also said Thailand’s plan to sell 11.4 million tonnes of rice in just two months was not feasible.

He said Thailand exported on average 400,000 to 500,000 tonnes of rice per month.

“To sell 11.4 million tonnes in just two months sounds unrealistic,” he said as quoted by Vietnamplus.vn.

The Vietnam Food Association said the impact on rice exports would not be huge in the second and third quarters as most contracts had been signed in the last quarter of 2015, and there was estimated to be 1.4 million tonnes of rice remaining to be shipped abroad under existing contracts.

Banh said the stockpiled rice for this Thai clearance would mainly be “substandard” grain that the government had purchased under the 2012-13 rice pledging programme, and Thailand would target markets such as some in Africa where demands for quality were not too high.

Since May 2014, Thailand has auctioned off 5.05 million tonnes of rice worth $1.5 billion. The Thai government has previously said it aimed to clear the stockpiles by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile, major import markets of Vietnamese rice are China, the Philippines and Indonesia, which have high standards for rice quality and prefer newly harvested Vietnamese rice, Banh said.

“Rice exports from Vietnam will not be significantly affected by Thailand’s sell-off in the coming months,” he said.

Close watch

Banh said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development had asked the Vietnam Food Association, rice companies and farmers to track movements in the global rice market closely, especially from Thailand’s clearance sale, for timely measures.

Nguyen Van Don, director of food-trading company Viet Hung in Tien Giang province, said the sale of Vietnam’s substandard rice would be affected the most by Thailand’s move, as Thailand was accelerating the sale of stockpiled rice sale in the months coinciding with Vietnam’s rice harvest.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade said at the end of April, days after Thailand’s announcement, that the global rice market was seeing unpredictable developments that would influence Vietnam’s rice exports in 2016.

He said a draft of the law required contenders for the seven NBTC board seats to be aged between 45 and 65 and that they must be high-ranking police or military officers, directors of the state enterprise, associate professors or private sector executives of companies with more than Bt3 billion in revenue a year. These qualifications blocked young talent from start-up business contending for the seats, he said.

‘Candidates mainly bureaucrats’

Somkiat said that based on this requirement the candidates would largely be made up of bureaucrats and this could affect freedom of the press and the protection of consumers as most of them may not give importance to these issues.

He said the selection committee for the board would be mainly made up of members of judicial bodies, and they would have no expertise in the telecom and broadcasting industries.

According to his interpretation, the draft of the new NBTC law opens the way for the use of “beauty contests” to reallocate TV broadcasting spectra, besides the auction method, and the former may not be able to ensure the utmost fairness and transparency in spectrum reassignment.

The new method would result in licences being granted to bidders with the most feasible business-model proposals.

The draft law is being considered by the National Legislative Assembly’s science and mass communications committee following Cabinet’s recent approval of the draft.

According to the draft, the board would be made up of seven members, a reduction from the present 11. Each of the seven will come from a specific background: radio broadcasting, TV broadcasting, telecommunications, engineering, law, economics, and consumer protection. However, it is not a requirement that each of these fields is represented on the board.

The ICT Ministry permanent secretary will appoint a seven-member committee to select the board. The panel will be made up of the chairmen of the Constitution Court, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Administration Court, the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, the Office of the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman Office, and the governor of the Bank of Thailand.

After receiving the list of candidates, the selection committee would reduce the number of applicants to 14 within 30 days. Then it will submit the list of 14 candidates for the Senate to consider within 30 days.

The ICT Ministry will have to start the selection process of the new board at least 150 days ahead of the expiry date of existing members’ terms – October 2017.

Apisak said the panel had approved the Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand’s formation of a committee under Article 35 of the Public Private Partnership Act to consider how to manage the overall project for the extended Blue Line routes.

The options are taking bids to develop the project or negotiating with the operator of the current Blue Line – Bangkok Expressway and Metro – he added.

The Cabinet agreed two weeks ago that the extended Blue Line route would include 1 kilometre of track from Tao Poon Station on the Purple Line to Bang Sue Station on the existing stretch of the Blue Line.

Apisak said the contract to develop and manage the Blue Line extensions would be drawn up on aPPP net-cost basis, which means the private contractor shoulders the entire investment cost and shares benefits from the project with the government.

The fast-track process of setting up a committee under Article 35 through to selecting the private company to invest in the Bt84-billion project has to be completed by the end of this year, before being submitted for Cabinet approval in January, Ekniti Nitithanprapas, director-general of the Finance Ministry’s State Enterprise Policy Office, explained.

It will then take at least 15 months to develop the extensions, include the 1-kilometre run from Tao Poon to Bang Sue, he said.

The PPP Committee yesterday also agreed with a proposal to renew the 30-year lease on a 1,498-rai plot in Sri Racha district, Chon Buri, which is home to an oil refinery operated by Thai Oil.

Under the approval, the Treasury Department has to revise the land appraisal of the plot and come up with a new rental rate that takes the state agency’s interests fully into account, Apisak said.

The outcome will then be submitted for Cabinet approval, after which the final contract will be referred to the PPP Committee for reconsideration.

The entire process will take no more than three months, he stressed, adding that reconsideration of the leasing deal should boost the confidence of the current lessee in respect of expanding its investment on the land.

Thai Oil plans to invest in a new refinery worth up to Bt120 billion on the site if it can renew the contract.

While the existing contract does not expire for another six years, the PPP Committee has to consider its renewal now in order to create confidence for the investor, the finance minister added.

Enforcement of democracy, respect for human rights and a peace process that would result in the reduction of conflicts and human rights violations should be the main issues for the review of sanctions.

While most sanctions were lifted, the remaining ones targeting some individuals and enterprises close to the previous junta – intended to create incentives for further reforms – had side-effects on American companies and Myanmar’s economy.

“We recognised that even the limited target sanctions occasionally had unintended effects on the broader economy,” he said.

“When I talked about the unintended consequences, the sanctions particularly so-called specially-designated nationals list, which target particular entities and individuals.

“The purpose of that is to create incentives for those entities and individuals to change their behaviours and support the reform efforts or stop doing whatever’s problematic.

“That is the intent. The intent is not to hurt the overall economy.

“These very narrow targeted sanctions inadvertently had a bigger impact on the economy, which is not the intention. So we love to see the ways that we can reduce the impacts.”

The remaining sanctions were regularly reviewed to reduce those unintended effects. “I cannot yet say when the outcomes of the review will be.

“But I want to stress that our goal is to continue to support those reforms and broad-based sustainable and equitable economic development,” he said.

The sanctions are not the only reason why American businesses are still cautious about doing business in Myanmar.

Physical infrastructure, rules and regulations, the rule of law and tax rates are the key areas that US investors usually take into consideration, and they also look at other places to invest, he said.

The US is all eyes on the Myanmar government’s actions to address the labour rights issue, which led to the suspension of GSP in April 1989. There are a lot of initiatives in the labour field.

“So, I am hopeful that there is a good opportunity to make very good progress, but exactly when to reach that magical point is a little bit hard for me to say.”

Investors in the US and elsewhere are waiting for the lifting of all sanctions and GSP.

After meeting with Herrstrom, Commerce Minister Apiradi Tantraporn said that with close relations with Thailand, Sweden sees Thailand as a hub of Asean and would like to expand trade and investment here.

Thailand could be a springboard for Swedish enterprises to penetrate Asean countries and the Asia continent, he said.

Thailand and Sweden also have the potential to form closer cooperation in innovation technology and design, and research and development, as Sweden has high expertise.

For instance, Sweden could help Thailand develop its Centre for Arts and Crafts International in terms of designing crafts and handicrafts, as well as help develop jewellery and ornament design.

Thailand will invite famous designers from Sweden to help train and exchange ideas with Thai jewellery and ornament designers.

Swedish traders have also been invited to join the Thailand Innovation and Design Expo and the seminar on Thai-Europe Innotech Links to be held in September for exchanging knowledge about design and technology with Thai entrepreneurs.

During the meeting with the Thai minister, the Swedish envoy also said his country will continue to trade and invest in Thailand, as it is confident of the quality of Thai products, especially rice and agricultural commodities.

Rice is the major import from Thailand to Sweden.

Sweden is Thailand’s 47th largest trading partner in the world and ninth among countries in the European Union.

In the past three years, two-way trade averaged US$1.4 billion. Last year, two-way trade reached $1.26 billion, with Thai exports to Sweden worth $474.6 million.

Other major products shipped to Sweden are electric appliances, automobiles and parts, air-conditioners and clothes.

Cumulative investment from Sweden in Thailand was worth Bt5.09 billion. Sweden is Thailand’s 12th largest source of foreign investors among the EU.

NBTC secretary-general Takorn Tantasith made the remark yesterday at a seminar hosted by the Information Technology Press Club on the lessons from the auctions of licences for fourth-generation wireless service.

Currently the average price of all combined packages of each of operators feature maximum voice fee at Bt0.69 per minute and data fee of Bt0.26 per megabytes.

Takorn also said Advanced Info Service subsidiary Advanced Wireless Network (AWN) would definitely take part in the auction for a licence on the 900-megahertz spectrum on May 27.

He said AIS had told him informally that its board had approved the plan to join the auction.

He said True Corp had still not made a final decision on taking part in the auction as its board had yet to meet on the matter.

So far only AWN and True Move H Universal Communication have picked up the documents for applying to participate in the auction. The bid invitation period runs from April 12 to May 17.

Total Access Communication (DTAC) recently announced that it would not take part.

The 900MHz licence up for grabs was forfeited by Jasmine International subsidiary Jas Mobile Broadband after winning it at an auction last December. The bidding starts at Bt75.654 billion, the final amount bid by Jas Mobile to win this band in December.

Qualified bidders will have to place a guarantee of Bt3.783 billion on May 18.