The shares began trading on Thursday on the SET’s Market for Alternative Investment.

Korn urged the Finance Ministry to investigate the case.

He posted on Facebook on Wednesday that he felt uneasy about the move by SISB, a ThaiSingaporean joint venture that reported up to Bt80 million in profit per year.

Korn said he did not mind private schools seeking profits as it created more investment and competition that provided parents with alternatives. He said market forces would generally ensure fairness in term of price and quality.

However, private schools were exempted from corporate income tax as the government wanted to support privatesector investment in education, he said.

By providing a tax incentive, the government should set a condition to control a ratio of profits that will turn into dividends for shareholders to ensure profits would go back to funding schools.

In case the company is selling its shares, the shareholders must pay tax for capital gains, as usual, he added.

“If the shareholders wanted to list the school on the SET, the government should cancel its tax privilege because the principle of a company entering the stock market is to maximise profits for shareholders, which is not in line with the government’s aim to support private schools,” Korn said.

“Being listed on SET will give pressure to the institute to make profits fast, which is not what the government’s tax incentive is given it for, and will allow stock investors to sell the shares for profit without having to pay tax,” he said.

He contrasted it to the private hospitals’ listing on SET. Private hospitals were not exempt from tax and were in need of raising money for costly medical equipment, he said.

He urged the government to invest in public schools which would narrow the social gap so citizens would not fall behind their wealthy peers who could afford private schools.

Italian-Thai Development president Premchai was not present as he had permission to do so while the other defendants Yong Dodkrua, Nathee Riamsaen, and Thanee Thummat were present. Premchai’s lawyer Witoon Yimpray said Premchai was preoccupied with work and his health was not good, requiring him to regularly take medications.

Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary chief Wichien Chinnawong told reporters that their supervisors have provided them encouragement including Department of National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation director-general Thanya Netithamkul who made a phone call to boost the sanctuary officials’ morale to fight the case.

The witness hearing for those from the prosecutors’ side opened on Tuesday.

National deputy police commissioner Pol General Srivara Ransibrahmanakul was the first to testify followed by Wichien, as the person who led officials to make the arrest.

Prior to his appearance on court on Wednesday, Wichien thanked the United Nations, USAID, Interpol, and the Freeland Foundation for recently honoring him with a special commendation at the UNEP Annual Environmental Enforcement Awards for his role in the “black panther” poaching case.

He said the recognition gave him encouragement and thanked everybody who saw the importance of conservation work.

“This award is regarded as the award bestowed to all Thung Yai people, not just me, because officials devote our lives to protect the Thung Yai Naresuan forest the best we can,” Wichien said.

He added that he would continue to perform his duties with courage and determination.

In February 2018, Wichien and his team found Premchai and three associates in an unauthorised zone of the wildlife sanctuary. Further checks found that there were weapons and animal carcasses, including a black panther, a Kalij pheasant, and a barking deer, near the group’s camp.

The four defendants face six charges: carrying firearms in public without permission; hunting wildlife inside a sanctuary without permission; killing protected wildlife without permission; possessing a protected wild animal’s carcass without permission; hiding or receiving an illegally hunted wild animal’s carcass; and harvesting products from a protected forest without permission.

The hearing is scheduled for 10 sessions, with 32 witness testimonies from the prosecutors’ side from Tuesday until Friday, from December 6-7, December 11-13 and on December 18. These will be followed by 17 witness testimonies from the defendants’ side, who are scheduled to take the stand over six sessions from December 19-21 and from December 25-27.

THE GOVERNMENT’S measures to tackle the problems over forest communities, which are outlined in a new Cabinet resolution, are deeply flawed, say representatives of forest dwellers.

The Cabinet on Tuesday approved five new forestland management plans and measures to tackle forest encroachment.

But prominent land rights activists and local people who have been affected by disputes over forestlands, yesterday said the new measures barely improved on ineffective previous measures.

The new Cabinet resolution will not make any difference, they said.

According to the Cabinet, the resolution was intended to settle land disputes between the authorities and local forest communities, as well as stop further encroachment into the forest by setting up a new land management framework.

Under the new approach, the people who lived on forestlands before June 30, 1998 will be granted a conditional communal land deed to ensure their rights over the land, but are not allowed to sell or transfer their land deeds to others.

However, prominent land rights activist and Green Party leader Pongsa Chunam said the new approach retains many of the problematic issues plaguing the previous forestland dispute mitigation measures. Still at risk are the livelihoods of more than 17 million people who are the original inhabitants of the conserved forests and national parks.

Inaccurate land survey

Pongsa used the land survey issue as an example to demonstrate that the survey of boundaries between the people’s land and forestland was again performed by officials without the participation of local people. Thus the problems of an inaccurate survey and disputed land boundaries have been carried over into the new resolution.

Like the Cabinet resolution of June 1998, the latest iteration “fails to provide concrete protection to the people who originally lived in the forests before the proclamation of conserved forests and national parks,” said Pongsa. “So they are still at risk of being the victims of enforced eviction by the authorities under the NCPO’s [National Council for Peace and Order] forestland reclamation policy.”

Kanya Pankitti, a People’s Movement for a Just Society activist, added that the land-use limitations and conditions for the people allowed to live on forestlands, were both unclear and in conflict with people’s livelihoods.

The new Cabinet resolution requires that forest communities allocate a part of their land to grow the forest. Kanya, who is among those affected by a land dispute with Khaopu Khaoya National Park in Trang province, said that this rule had not been clearly written. People fear that a large part of their land will be appropriated for reforestation, with insufficient land left for them to farm and economically sustain their families.

She is also concerned about the risk of enforced evictions. Even though many communities in Khaopu Khaoya National Park were founded before it was declared a national park, many families had already been evicted from their lands, as well as sued under forest encroachment charges as part of the NCPO’s forestland reclamation policy.

Meanwhile, Royal Forest Department director-general Athapol Charoenshunsa confirmed that local people would be involved in forestland dispute mitigation measures. The Cabinet resolution would be planned and implemented at each locality, with oversight by that district’s national land policy committee. Representatives from forest communities will be members on the committee, said Athapol.

Local people are invited to take part in the land rights verification process and the drafting of land use conditions for their local area alongside the related agencies, Athapol pledged. That participation should ensure the forestland management policy suits the situation in each area, he added.

“The intention of this Cabinet Resolution is to ensure land rights for the original inhabitants in the forest, and to encourage the communities in the forest live in harmony with nature and protect the forest,” he said.

“Therefore, the people who are allowed to live in the forest, are required to comply with mutually agreed conditions with the related agencies to make sure that their livelihoods and land use activities will be consistent with nature and forest conservation.”

“The IPD has adversely affected the lives of people in Thailand by not throwing out patent applications that should have long been rejected,” Nimit Tien-udom, director of the Aids Access Foundation, said yesterday.

He spoke as he and representatives of the Thai Network of People Living with HIV/Aids (TNP+) turned up at the department to demand that it remove four patent applications for medicines from its system because they had long been disputed.

“Because the IPD has not removed these applications from its system, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) does not dare make these medicines.

“When Thailand does not make these medicines under compulsory licensing, patients have difficulty accessing them. These medicines remain expensive,” Nimit said.

He said his group had objected to four patent applications within the 90-day period after the applications were first advertised. One of them was for Raltegravir, and the other three for Sofosbuvir.

By law, the IPD must advertise a patent application after receiving it. If anyone disagrees with the issuance of a patent related to the application, they must do so within 90 days of the advertising. Still, items in patent applications continue to receive legal protection until the IPD rejects them.

“By not throwing out their applications, it’s as if the IPD has granted them a patent because they enjoy legal protection. Who suffers then?” Nimit asked. “The answer is patients and the National Health Security Office”, which offers most types of medical services to about 48 million Thais for free.

Raltegravir is used in a combination with other medications as an anti-retroviral to treat HIV/Aids.

Sofosbuvir is a direct acting antiviral medication used as part of combination therapy to treat chronic Hepatitis C – an infectious liver disease caused by infection with Hepatitis C Virus (HCV).

“The risk of people living with HIV contracting HCV is 10 times more than for others,” Nimit said.

He complained that the IPD was inefficient in handling medicine-related patent applications.

According to him, the IPD has acknowledged the disputes against four patent applications in 2016 and 2017.

“But to date, medicines at the centre of the applications continue to receive protection,” Nimit said.

He said the IPD needed to provide clear answers, because patients had already suffered for too long. “Medicines in these patent applications are nothing new. They do not deserve protection under intellectual-property law,” he said.

He also criticised the IPD for always giving confusing information, when they are asked if patent applications related to medicines for people living with HIV had been filed.

“Sometimes, we have had to ask for information from drug manufacturers,” he said. Nimit spoke up just a few days before World Aids Day, which has been observed worldwide since 1988 to raise public awareness on HIV.

Many people – hugging documents to their chest – couldn’t hold back tears of joy over getting the assets they thought were lost due to “unfair contracts” with illegal moneylenders.

Prawit – in his capacity as deputy PM supervising police affairs – presided over a ceremony at Loei Pittayakom School in Muang district. This is the fifth time that a big ceremony has been held to help people get their assets back from off-system moneylenders.

The deputy PM said the Northeast appeared to have the highest number of people – 560,000 of 900,000 nationwide – who have fallen victim to illegal moneylenders, so the authorities will do their best to help them with this issue of high-interest off-system debts that keeps people poor.

Prawit thanked all state agencies for helping solve problems and enforcing the law. He said this and the previous ceremonies had seen assets worth more than Bt13.7 billion returned to the people, including 9,526 land-title deeds covering 31,838 rai (5,100 hectares) nationwide.

The deputy PM has presided over all five large-scale ceremonies of this type, with similar smaller events held simultaneously by police in other provinces.

This time, a smaller event was held simultaneously in Nakhon Ratchasima, where Provincial Police Region 3 acting chief Pol Lt-General Pulsap Prasertsak handed land-title deeds to 390 debtors, and in Bangkok, where Provincial Police Region 1 chief Pol Lt-General Ampol Buarapporn returned 290 land-title deeds, 10 cars and 27 motorcycles.

“Political parties should focus on how to end economic monopolies. Most parts of the Thai economy have been monopolised by a few groups for far too long,” Assoc Professor Nualnoi Treerat, a lecturer from the Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Economics, said at a seminar this week.

Held at Thammasat University’s Centre for Research on Inequality and Social Policy, the seminar addressed inequality and explored possible solutions.

Asst Professor Duangmanee Laovakul, who teaches at Thammasat’s Faculty of Economics, cited an example of more than 600,000 rai being held by one person, while thousands of farmers remain landless and destitute.

“Of the richest Thais, 10 per cent hold more than 60 per cent of the country’s land that can be occupied,” she pointed out, adding that 20 per cent of the population also owns half of the country’s assets, such as land plots, houses, buildings and automobiles.

In 2015, the average monthly income in Thailand stood at Bt9,409, and when classified by region, those living in the Central region earned the most at Bt12,818 per month. In comparison, those living in southern border provinces, where unrest has been raging for more than a decade, earned just Bt5,725 on average per month.

Nualnoi said this inequality will possibly continue because Thailand’s economic structure has hardly changed in the past three decades. Therefore, she said, it is time for policymakers and political parties to think about how they can improve the distribution of economic benefits in the country.

At the very least, she said, small entrepreneurs should get more benefits, while the country’s land and resources should be shared more fairly. She also urged the state to focus on healthcare and education inequality.

“Gaps in educational and healthcare quality have aggravated inequality,” she pointed out.

Jakchai Chomthongdee, advocacy and campaign coordinator at Oxfam Thailand, said statistics showed that 1 per cent of the richest people in the world received 27 per cent of economic benefits.

Very unfair distribution

“Simply put, when there is one extra baht in the market, Bt0.27 of it goes to the 1 per cent richest,” he said, adding that if such trends continued, poverty reduction would take over a century to solve.

He also said that since one-third of the country’s wealth was inherited, policymakers should find a solution by controlling this inherited money.

“Or else, people who are born poor will remain poor all their lives,” he said.

Though the government has imposed inheritance tax, it only has to be paid when the value of the inheritance is worth more than Bt100 million.

“Tax on land and buildings should be waived when the estate is worth less than Bt5 million, not Bt50 million,” she said.

Nualnoi also encouraged decentralisation of power, because it will facilitate a better distribution of resources.

“Don’t worry about corruption. If the people are well informed, they will be able to keep local administrative bodies in check,” she said.

Meanwhile, trading in the shares of SISB – considered an “educational stock”, meaning investors will receive a tax-free dividend – begins today in the SET’s Market for Alternative Investment The Education Minister said that although the move does not violate the Private School Act 2007, there was a question of ethics.

The minister said in his personal view an educational institute gets a tax waiver so its move to raise funds to obtain more profits without paying tax raises the question of ethics.

“The act of entering the SET is obviously to seek more profits… If this is what’s happening, should the Finance Ministry start to collect tax? This can have a widespread impact and the related law must be reviewed… Even if the move is legal, it still might be unethical and against the ideology of the country’s educational management,” he said.

Teerakiat said he had discussed this with the International Schools Association of Thailand, seeking its help to find a solution. He said he would consult the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for clarity and, if such move were seen as a way to make profit from the education business, he would discuss with the Finance Ministry about levying tax. Teerakiat admitted that his attempt to stop SISB from listing on the SET might not yield immediate result, but he would do his utmost to block such a move or others may also follow suit.

The Office of the Private Education Commission (OPEC) secretary-general, Chalam Attham, meanwhile, said his office would ask the SEC to review its decision to list SISB on the SET.

He said Article 22 of the Private Schools Act 2007 had set two conditions for companies running schools in regard to the number of shares and the stockholders. He said the OPEC is willing to offer the information for the SEC’s consideration.

SEC secretary-general Rapee Sucharitakul earlier yesterday affirmed that it was not illegal for SISB to register with SET, as the OPEC, which is in charge of private schools, had told his agency before it approved SISB’s listing that there was no regulation to prohibit the move.

Rapee said all businesses – including the private school business – required investments for improvement hence they have to raise funds in some way. Listing on the SET to raise funds from the public was a method with low cost, he said. “Whether the school will then charge high tuition fees will be a question that the supervising agency will have to deal with,” Rapee added. SET president Pakorn Peetathawatchai echoed Rapee’s viewpoint, saying there was no regulation against a private school business listing on the SET. On the upside, listing an educational institute on the SET could promote transparency, as people could check its information and compare that with other institutes, he argued. SISB has five campuses in Thailand: Pracha Uthit, Ekkamai, Suvarnabhumi, Thonburi, and the northern province of Chiang Mai. The campuses – adopting Singaporean and British curricula – currently have 2,274 students in total.