A second new committee will also be set up to manage the contract for this project, Kanit Sangsubhan, the committee’s secretary general, said, adding that this was in line with the proposals of the EEC management panel chaired by Finance Minister Uttama Savanayana.

On October 24, the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) and Eastern High-Speed Rail Linking Three Airports Co., Ltd, led by Charoen Pokphand Holding and strategic alliances, signed a Public Private Partnership (PPP) deal to develop the high-speed rail linking Don Mueang, Suvarnabhumi and U-Tapao airports.

The EEC committee also appointed a panel to study and draw up the plan to establish the waste-driven power plants in the EEC and the power purchase plan. The panel consists of representatives from the Interior Ministry, Energy Ministry, PTT Global Power Synergy (GPSC). It will have to submit the progress of the study within next three months.

The plants are expected to be completely set up in next few years.

He estimated that the hikewould see business operators paying an additional Bt30 billion in wages a year to labourers.

From this point of view, the rate is acceptable and not too high, he said, adding that it was speculated earlier that the daily minimum wage would increase by between Bt10 and Bt15.

The National Wage Committee announced today (December 6) that it will raise the minimum wage by Bt6 in nine provinces and Bt5 for others.

The committee will propose the new wage for Cabinet approval as soon as possible as it intended the increase to take effect on January 1, 2020. Supant Mongkolsuthree, chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), said he believes the industrial sector could cope with the new rate in spite of the ongoing economic deceleration.

The hike, he said, would mostly affect SMEs and the farm sector as they are labour-intensive sectors while major industrial firms could adapt by deploying automation/robotics system.

A so-called environment bonus will jump by 50% to as much as 6,000 euros ($6,680) per electric vehicle and the auto industry will continue to cover half the cost, Merkel’s chief spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in a statement. The changes will take effect this month and run through 2025, according to Bernhard Mattes, president of Germany’s VDA auto lobby.

“It will therefore be possible to provide support for another 650,000 to 700,000 electric vehicles,” Seibert said. The measures were agreed Monday evening in Berlin between Merkel and officials from automakers, parts suppliers and labor unions, including the chief executives of Volkswagen AG, BMW AG and Daimler AG.

The accord came a day after Merkel visited a revamped VW electric-car plant in Zwickau, eastern Germany. The chancellor has come under fire for failing to make more progress in curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, while VW — the world’s biggest carmaker — has invested billions in the shift to electric vehicles.

Merkel’s Climate Protection Program 2030, unveiled in September, targets as many as 10 million electric cars on German roads by that year, a goal that most automotive experts say is unrealistic even with generous subsidies. As of the start of the year, there were about 420,000 electric and hybrid-electric vehicles in a national fleet of 47 million, according to the the University of Duisburg-Essen’s Center for Automotive Research.

Merkel called the challenges facing the industry “a paradigm shift in mobility that has never been realized in automotive history.”

Germany is closing in on Norway for European leadership with sales of almost 53,000 all-electric cars this year, according to the KBA, or federal motor transport authority. Per-capita it remains far behind the smaller country, and it’s still unclear how many German customers will ultimately switch to electric cars in a country with a rich automotive heritage centered on combustion engines.

Subsidies make a difference because higher costs for development and batteries drive up the price of an electric car. VW’s ID.3, for example, will start at just under 30,000 euros ($33,200 U.S.), while the least-expensive version of the new combustion-powered Golf will be sold for less than 20,000 euros.

The government’s push to promote electric cars includes boosting the number of public charging stations to 50,000 within two years, Seibert said. Automakers will help fund 15,000 of the stations by 2022. BMW has said it will install 4,100 charging points at its German locations by 2021, with about half being open to the public.

“I see this as an absolute chance to now increase demand, which will be good for us,” Klaus Rosenfeld, chief executive officer of German automotive supplier Schaeffler AG, said in an interview Tuesday.

“Anything that helps to achieve this mobility transformation, to increase consumer demand, is good for us, so in that sense we welcome the decision made today,” he added.

Merkel said in a podcast Sunday that the government’s focus is on promoting electric vehicles, but that it’s also open to hydrogen technology. It wants 1 million charging stations to be in place by 2030, she said.

Merkel’s $60 billion climate package failed to restore her reputation as a champion of the environment. Critics branded the measures, such as extra taxes on flights, as insufficient for a “climate emergency,” while economists criticized carbon price proposals as too shy an approach to spur emissions cuts.

Big industry and some union leaders slammed Germany’s go-it-alone approach, saying it would harm jobs and businesses.

Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, the director of Center for Automotive Research, estimates a tally of about 5 million all-electric and hybrid car registrations by 2030. Reaching that level would be an achievement, he said in September.

The figures from the Ifo Institute offer a glimmer of hope a day after a survey showed manufacturing still stuck in a slump and industry employment falling at the fastest pace in almost 10 years. Germany’s economy is forecast to have slipped into a technical recession in the third quarter, though economists see a return to modest growth at the end of the year.

Ifo said Friday its business climate indicator was unchanged in October, and the expectations measure rose more than economists forecast to a three-month high.

The euro rose 0.1% to $1.1117. German 10-year bond yields, which have been pushed far below zero this year on concern about the economy, climbed 2 basis points to minus 0.38%.

The report is a rare piece of encouraging news for the export-reliant economy, which is taking hits on multiple fronts, from a global slowdown amid trade tensions to upheaval in its key auto industry. Purchasing Managers’ Indexes show manufacturing mired in a deep slump, though the latest figures also showed that a decline in demand has eased somewhat.

The country’s struggles are also weighing on the euro zone, where the European Central Bank stepped up monetary stimulus last month by cutting interest rates further below zero and reviving asset purchases. In his final press conference on Thursday, President Mario Draghi highlighted how the euro-area services sector is now showing signs of negative contagion.

While the downturn has amplified calls for governments to add fiscal stimulus, in Germany imminent action appears unlikely.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the problem isn’t a shortage of money for investment, and there are sufficient projects in the pipeline. A government spokeswoman said Friday that Germany is sticking to its balanced-budget policy and sees no need for a spending program to boost the economy — a worrying sign for Christine Lagarde, who takes over the ECB presidency following Draghi’s exit this month.

The data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, beat expectations. Analysts had forecast roughly 180,000 new jobs for the month.

The tally was impacted by thousands of General Motors workers who returned to their jobs in late October after a lengthy strike.

The labor market has remained one of the brightest spots in the economy, and combined with the high stock market has contributed to high levels of consumer spending and a relatively rosy consumer sentiment.

Many employers are still struggling to find qualified workers to fill jobs, but other companies have had to cut jobs because of a recent pullback in manufacturing demand.

The labor market’s health could have big implications for the 2020 elections.

Concerns about a looming recession have waned, but the economy has still shown signs of cooling. Economists have warned the mounting toll of President Donald Trump’s protracted trade war has strained global trade growth and slowed the creation of American jobs. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said Trump’s tariffs have wrought so much uncertainty that companies are delaying investments and slowing the economy.

But major parts of the economy continue to show resilience, buoyed in part by consumer spending and the low unemployment rate.

Uncertainty remains an issue. Just this week, Trump said he could wait to strike a deal with China until after the 2020 election, sending stocks plunging. The volatility followed Trump’s announcement he was reimposing tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Brazil and Argentina, though the timeline for this action is uncertain.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at accounting firm Grant Thornton, expected November’s numbers to rise significantly from the month before as GM workers returned to work. Roughly 48,000 strikers, and 12,000 workers who suffered layoffs during the strike, are expected to have returned to the payrolls, Swonk said.

Still, Swonk projected some drag on employment thanks to the loss of 12,000 temporary workers who wrapped up their jobs for the 2020 census. Holiday hires were expected to stay muted so long as retail stores continued closing their doors.

Seasonal retail hiring is also down. Compounding store closures is a shift among retailers to focus on their websites and distribution centers to meet customer demand, rather than stocking physical stores with employees, said Julia Pollak, an economist at ZipRecruiter, a popular job site.

Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, expected November to bring solid job growth. But he said that monthly average job growth for the year is running 26% below the pace seen this time last year. Hamrick said a “major development of some kind” would be needed to change course.

“Employers continue to counter challenges associated with trade disputes and tariffs,” Hamrick wrote in comments Thursday. “The general election, now less than one year away, will add another layer of uncertainty for business leaders trying to make decisions on hiring and investment.”

Additionally, private payroll growth in November grew by just 67,000, according to a Wednesday estimate from ADP and Moody’s Analytics. That number came in far behind estimates of 150,000, marking the slowest growth since May. Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s, said in a statement that the “job market is losing its shine,” adding that manufacturers, commodity producers and retailers were shedding jobs and that openings were declining.

“If job growth slows any further unemployment will increase,” Zandi said earlier this week.

The country added a better-than-expected 128,000 jobs in October when the jobless rate rose slightly to 3.6%. Those numbers were affected by the General Motors strike, in which workers shut down production for six weeks at the automaker. The strike spurred layoffs from Canada to Mexico in related industries and caused a rise in unemployment claims in states like Michigan.