Chinese tea chain debuts in Thailand with outlet in Bangkok
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Nongluck Ajanapanya
Premium Chinese tea house Chagee has opened its first branch in Bangkok, hoping organic tea leaves from its own farm will entice tea drinkers to its debut shop on the sixth floor of Central World.
Chagee Thailand CEO Aphichat Chuanchaiwong told a press conference on Friday that the company plans to open 10 more branches in Bangkok next year and has a revenue target of 50 million baht.
Even though there are many domestic and international tea shops, particularly bubble tea, in Thailand’s market, there is still room for new players, Apichat said, citing market research by Chagee that valued the market here at 26 billion baht. The research found a lack of premium tea drinks made from high-quality ingredients, which created an opportunity for Chagee, said Aphichat.
Even consumers of bubble milk tea expect it to contain high-quality, healthy ingredients, Apichat said.
He described the chain’s concept as “Chinese Chic”, saying it only uses genuine Chinese tea from its own organic farm near Kunming, Yunnan province, “the birthplace of tea”.
Chagee launched in southwestern China in 2017 and rapidly expanded throughout the country before expanding regionwide. It now has more than 500 branches in Asia.
Warrix Sport raises over 112 million baht as shares snapped up from SET’s Big Lot
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
More than 15 million shares of sportswear manufacturer Warrix Sport Pcl were snapped up as soon as they were put on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET)’s Big Lot board on Wednesday.
The company announced on Thursday that it had raised 112.42 million baht through shares being sold at 7.49 per piece via the Big Lot board.
Warrix CEO Wisan Wanasaksrisakul said investors clearly saw potential in the company thanks to its steady growth, clear business direction and strategy as well as promising expansion plans in line with the growing sports and healthcare industries.
“Warrix aims to penetrate new customer bases in high-potential markets to bring about unlimited growth and profits to shareholders,” he added.
Wisan estimates that more people will become health-conscious and start exercising next year, which will drive up the sales of both licensed and non-licensed products.
“Plus, many domestic and international sports events have been scheduled for 2023, which will help maximise visibility and demand for our products,” he added.
Listed on the Market for Alternative Investment (MAI), Warrix is eyeing additional investment to boost its business, including the building of a new office and sports science centre on Rama IX Road to serve customers in the East of Bangkok, its Warrix Run Hub at Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre, Warrix Lifestyle shop at Siam Square and hosting more running events to promote eco-tourism, like the Changsuek Run and Ex Trail Run series.
A group of mahouts, each dressed as Santa Claus, led a herd of elephants into a school in central Thailand on Friday (December 23) to distribute Christmas gifts to students.
Cambodia logs 873 suicides as poverty, debt and depression take heavy toll
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Nearly 900 people have committed suicide in Cambodia this year, the leading causes being debt, depression, failed relationships, chronic illness, or the mental effects of alcohol/drugs, according to a police report.
The report said the favoured methods of suicide were hanging, poison, jumping from tall buildings and bridges, self-immolation, and firearms.
“A total of 873 people died and 13 were injured in suicide attempts,” it said.
Globally, suicides have risen steadily since 2016, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), with no country claiming to be able to address this issue successfully.
“Every case is a tragedy that has a lasting impact on survivors, including families, communities and the nation as a whole. It is the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide among people aged 15-29,” said a WHO report.
Most suicide cases occur in times of crisis when people feel unable to cope with stress, whether from chronic pain or illness, financial difficulties or the end of a relationship, it added.
Sek Socheat, co-founder of Cambodia’s Mindset Development Organisation, said people were becoming mentally ill and depressed under the stress of severe social and economic injustices. Severe depression can lead to people considering their own lives worthless, he added.
“A lack of education to raise awareness of mental health issues is one reason why so many people are vulnerable to serious depression. This, coupled with serious social and economic injustices, has led to some patients committing suicide.
“The most urgent and effective solution would be to integrate mental health education in the community and provide socio-economic and health support to more communities,” he told The Post.
Yim Sobotra, a psychiatrist at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital in Phnom Penh, said patients he sees with chronic mental illness or severe depression are often suffering from a lack of opportunities or poverty, or have experienced violence or abuse.
“People aware they are experiencing mental health difficulties should see a qualified professional. Receiving treatment from a specialist will help them manage their stress and anxiety more effectively. Parents, guardians or family members should encourage one another to seek help,” he said.
He added that many people’s understanding of mental health remains limited. All units of Cambodia’s healthcare system should work to increase public awareness of mental and physical health, he said.
Phnom Penh logged the highest number of suicides at 119. Four people survived attempts or were rescued. Kampong Cham province recorded the second-highest, with 66 deaths while Battambang was third with 64 suicides.
The province with the lowest number of recorded suicides was Ratanakkiri, with six.
It takes 14 years of serious scrimping to own a home in Seoul
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
An average wage earner in South Korea would have to save up their entire income for 14 years to buy a home in Seoul, a recent government study shows.
The price-to-income ratio — the median home price divided by the median annual household income — for Seoul in 2021 jumped to 14.1 from 12.5 in 2020, according to the 2021 Korea Housing Survey released by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
The figure was higher than that of any other region in the country, with Sejong being the only other city where it was in double digits, at 11.3.
The ratio rose for all regions in the country, with the nationwide figure being 6.7, up from 5.5 in the year before. After Seoul and Sejong came Gyeonggi Province, Daejeon, and Daegu, with 9.9, 7.7 and 7.5, respectively.
The ratio of homeowners in the greater Seoul area — comprising the capital and Gyeonggi Province — logged a slight increase from 53% to 54.7%, while the rest of the country marked a slight drop. The figure for the entire country was unchanged at 60.6%.
Housing prices and related policies have always been key points of interest for South Koreans. The previous Moon Jae-in administration was widely slammed for its housing policy, with some 76% of the respondents in a January survey by Data Research saying it was “not doing well” on housing, despite the outgoing president’s relatively-high overall approval rating of 44.1%.
President Yoon Suk-yeol has vowed to loosen regulations on real estate to increase the supply of homes since his campaigning days, leading up to his election victory in March of this year.
While house prices have risen, rents have become more affordable. The annual government report released on Wednesday also showed that the national rent-to-income ratio dropped from 16.6% in 2020 to 15.7% in 2021. It took an average head of a family 7.7 years to buy his or her first home, the same as the year before.
The survey showed that 88.9% of the respondents believe that owning a home is necessary, up from 87.7% the year before. Newlyweds in particular showed a strong desire to own a home, at 90.7%.
In the interest of achieving that goal, 41.3% said there was a need for government-funded housing support programmes. Specifically, loans for purchasing homes (36%), loans for deposits when renting homes (23.9%), providing more long-term public housing (10.9%), and rent support (9.8%).
The annual report was conducted on 51,000 households across the country, the details of which have been made public on the homepage of the MOLIT Statistics System, provided in Korean and English.
Vietnamese tourism has not recovered as expected despite early re-opening
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Vietnamese tourism and airline services have not recovered as expected despite the country’s early opening for tourism after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Le Quoc Minh, editor-in-chief of Nhan Dan (People) newspaper.
He made the statement at a roundtable themed “Economic and business recovery 2022: Solutions to create a breakthrough from the pillar of the aviation-tourism service,” organised recently by the newspaper in collaboration with the Research and Development Department of the Private Economy.
Minh assessed that Vietnam’s economy recovered rapidly and continued to grow despite global challenges in 2022. The economic recovery momentum comes from macroeconomic stability, agricultural support, and the rapid recovery of the manufacturing, processing and domestic consumption sectors.
However, he noted that the Vietnamese economic recovery has been uneven across sectors. Despite its early opening for tourism after the pandemic on March 15, tourism-airline services have not recovered as expected as the number of international visitors has been much lower than in some other countries in the region.
According to Chris Farwell, representative of the Tourism Advisory Board (TAB), Vietnam’s tourism in general has grown stronger than forecast in the domestic market, increasing by more than 100 million visitors compared to initial forecasts.
However, the number of international tourists did not achieve the expected recovery rate, reaching about 3.5 million international tourists, much lower than the target of five million international arrivals in 2022 and US$4.5 billion in revenue, he added.
Foreign visitors contribute a significant part to the total revenue structure of the tourism industry. It is estimated that in the three years before the Covid-19 pandemic, international visitors to Vietnam were only 20 % of domestic visitors but contributed about 58 % of total income. In 2019 specifically, total revenue from international tourists accounted for $18.3 billion of the total revenue of $32.8 billion generated by the tourism industry.
Meanwhile, other countries in the region, such as Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia, have all exceeded their targets in terms of attracting international visitors and recovering the tourism industry.
Thailand has reached its goal of 10 million international tourists set for 2022 by the beginning of December, earning total revenue of $14 billion. In the last two months of 2022, some of Thailand’s main markets in Europe have nearly resumed to pre-Covid-19 levels while none of Vietnam’s key markets has recovered to 50 % of their levels before the pandemic.
Urgent actions needed
According to Farwell, one of the main reasons for the success of tourism in other countries in the region after re-opening is the increase of the visa-free period to over 30 days for international visitors.
The representative of TAB added that Vietnam has not had a national plan for revitalising the tourism and hospitality industry. In addition, the national tourism industry is still largely dependent on irregular, regional initiatives and projects or domestic tourists to “feed” itself. The country is also lacking a working group that includes representatives of the Government and the private sector to collaborate to develop and deploy a national plan for tourism.
He, therefore, recommended that quick action and incentives must be implemented to entice more tourists, while the government urgently needs to support the tourism industry.
At the roundtable, business leaders, economic experts and representatives of state management agencies focused on discussing and identifying the main bottlenecks hindering achieving the goal of attracting five million international tourists and the reasons why Vietnam is at the bottom of the international tourism recovery rankings compared to other countries in the region despite its early opening.
The conference agreed to propose urgent solutions for 2023 so that aviation tourism can fully recover, such as making the visa-free list of countries equal to Thailand (65 countries), extending the number of visa-free days to 30-45 days or more, removing Covid-19 treatment insurance and perfecting policies and mechanisms to facilitate the recovery of tourism by setting up a special working group to restore Vietnam’s international tourism arrivals.
The solutions will be compiled and submitted to the Government and the Prime Minister for consideration at a national tourism conference that kicks off on December 21.
FTX founder Bankman-Fried released on $250 mln bond at US court appearance
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond package while he awaits trial on fraud charges related to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused him of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Bankman-Fried was not asked to enter a plea on Thursday (December 22). He has previously acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability. His defence lawyer, Mark Cohen, declined to comment after the hearing in Manhattan federal court.
Nicolas Roos, a prosecutor, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein that the bail package would require Bankman-Fried to surrender his passport and remain in home confinement at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California. He would also be required to undergo regular mental health treatment and evaluation.
Roos called the package the “largest ever pretrial bond.”
Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested last week in the Bahamas, where he lived and where FTX is based, cementing the one-time billionaire’s fall from grace. He departed the Caribbean nation in FBI custody on Wednesday night.
Cohen said he agreed with the prosecutors’ proposed bail conditions. He noted that his parents – both Stanford Law School professors – would co-sign the bond and post the equity in their home as assurance for Bankman-Fried’s return to court.
Wearing a grey suit and leg restraints, Bankman-Fried sat flanked by his lawyers and nodded when the judge informed him that if he fails to appear in court, a warrant would be issued for his arrest.
He spoke only when asked by Gorenstein whether he understood the conditions of his release, and that he could be charged with an additional crime if he fails to show up to court.
Gorenstein set Bankman-Fried’s next court date for Jan. 3, 2023 before U.S. District Judge Ronny Abrams, who will handle the case.
He said Bankman-Fried had “achieved sufficient notoriety that it would be impossible” for him to hide without being recognized or engage in further financial schemes.
Bankman-Fried founded FTX in 2019. A boom in the values of bitcoin and other digital assets propelled the exchange to a valuation of some $32 billion earlier this year, making the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate a billionaire several times over, as well as an influential donor to U.S. political campaigns.
But concerns about the commingling of funds between FTX and Alameda led to a flurry of customer withdrawals in early November, ultimately forcing the exchange to declare bankruptcy on Nov. 11. Bankman-Fried later said at a New York Times conference that he had just $100,000 in his bank account.
Flood-prone Thailand, Laos to partner on tackling climate-change issues
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Varawut Silpa-archa met with Laos Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh in Vientiane to discuss cooperation on climate issues on Wednesday.
Also accompanying Varawut on the trip to Lao People’s Democratic Republic is ministry permanent secretary Jatuporn Buruspat.
After the meeting, Varawut said he discussed experiences and strategies in tackling problems of natural resources and the environment, with a focus on climate-change issues that both countries are facing.
Both sides also discussed cooperation to promote the Bio-Circular-Green economy or BCG Model that Thailand has initiated.
The meeting came as Thailand’s economic planning agency revealed that flooding driven by climate change has killed more than 2,000 people and cost 12.59 trillion baht over the past 30 years. Laos also suffers flood disasters on an almost annual basis and is considered highly vulnerable to climate change because of its low level of socio-economic development.
Varawut said a memo of understanding (MoU) to be signed between the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organisation and Laos’ Department of Climate Change will help future Thai-Laos climate operations run smoothly.
Domestic tourists to spend THB 11 billion during the New Year holiday
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Domestic tourists will spend about 11.2 billion baht during the four-day New Year holiday, according to a forecast from the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). It forecasts that domestic tourists will make 3.14 million visits during the break.
Between 700,000 and 800,000 foreign tourists are also expected to visit Thailand during the Christmas to New Year period. They will generate about 26 billion baht in revenue, TAT Governor Yuthasak Supasorn said on Friday.
He said the average reservation rate at hotels nationwide has already reached 75% for the four-day weekend starting on December 30. The reservation rate is highest in the North where it has reached 78%, Yuthasak said.
The TAT will spend about 50 million baht on two New Year countdowns – in Bangkok and Songkhla’s Hat Yai district – under the theme “Amazing Thailand Countdown 2023”, he said.
The TAT will sponsor similar New Year celebrations in other locations, including Phuket, Chiang Mai, Samui Island, Buri Ram, and Krabi, Yuthasak said.
He said that the cancellation of some previously scheduled New Year festivities would not affect tourism during the New Year holiday because events are going ahead as planned in many locations.
With 700,000 to 800,000 foreign tourists expected in the final week of this year, the total number of foreign arrivals will reach 11.5 million for 2022, exceeding the original target of 10 million. Inbound tourism will generate about 1.5 trillion baht in revenue this year, Yuthasak said.
Malaysia is the top source of foreign tourists this year. India, Laos, Cambodia, and Singapore complete the top five, in that order. South Korea, Vietnam, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia follow.
The TAT has set a target of 20 million foreign tourists for next year, Yuthasak said, adding that the number is about 80% of the pre-pandemic level. They are expected to generate 2.38 trillion baht in revenue, he said.
Bangkok 2023 countdown at Iconsiam still on, says TAT chief
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2022
Bangkok’s “Amazing Thailand Countdown 2023” at Iconsiam on New Year’s Eve has not been cancelled, the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) insisted.
TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said on Friday that no cancellation orders have arrived from the government or the Tourism and Sports Ministry.
“The ‘Amazing Thailand Countdown 2023’ focuses on happiness, hope and moving forward together to boost the country’s economy after it was hit by the pandemic for five years,” he said.
Yuthasak made the comment after news was published about Pattaya cancelling its December 29-31 fireworks display as Thais pray for the recovery of HRH Princess Bajrakitiyabha Narendira Debyavati.
“Even though the Pattaya countdown and other festivals are being adjusted, TAT believes they should not affect the expected revenue during the New Year period because tourists have already made reservations,” he said.
TAT expects some 3.14 million domestic trips to generate around 11.2 billion baht from New Year’s Eve to January 2.
The average occupancy rate, meanwhile, is expected to be around 75%, he said, adding that hotels in the North should attract some 560,380 local visitors during the period, generating up to 2.05 billion baht.
TAT expects this New Year’s to be livelier as people can finally celebrate and return to their hometowns now that Covid has eased.
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