The Labour Ministry announced on Tuesday that more than 220,000 jobs have been created to help Thailand get ready for its reopening on November 1.
Labour Minister Suchart Chomklin said the government’s plan to allow double-jabbed travellers from 10 low-risk countries to enter Thailand without having to quarantine will give tourism, service and entertainment industries a much-needed boost.
He added that the ministry has instructed the Department of Employment to build a list of jobs available nationwide so people can start applying.
ADVERTISEMENT
“As of October, there were 222,871 vacancies. The top five jobs available were for workers assembly and packaging factories, store salespersons, business service persons, trade representatives as well as technical and commercial salespersons,” he said.
“The top five businesses that need workers the most are manufacturing, motorcycle retail and wholesale shops, construction, medical supplies, finance and insurance.”
Pairoj Chotikasatien, director-general of the Department of Employment, said the department has come up with video clips to promote jobs in 42 leading companies in 16 provinces. He said this should encourage Thais who have completed their secondary schooling to apply.
Job seekers can watch the clips on the department’s website doe.go.th and either apply via its “Thai Me Ngaan Tham” (Thais have jobs) platform at thaimengaantam.doe.go.th or through their local Employment Office.
The Bank of Thailand (BOT) is testing three peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms under its regulatory sandbox and believes they should go into operation in the beginning of 2022.
The central bank’s assistant governor Siritida Panomwon Na Ayudhya said the three companies being tested are DeepSparks Peer Lending, NestiFly, and Peer Power Platform.
The evaluation process covers their system, security and service model, and once the companies can fulfil all criteria, the BOT will seek a business licence for them with the Finance Ministry.
ADVERTISEMENT
Siritida said she expects these companies to be ready for operation by the end of this year or beginning of next year.
She explained that consumer behaviour has changed drastically due to the Covid crisis, and it is time for businesses to make changes.
P2P lending websites connect borrowers directly to lenders, who loan money to eligible applicants. It’s an alternative to borrowing from a bank or a traditional money lender. These platforms offer different types of loans at competitive interest rates and low fees.
Peer-to-peer lending websites to take off in Thailand soon
The baht opened at 33.70 to the US dollar on Tuesday, strengthening from Monday’s closing rate of 33.88.
The Thai currency is likely to move between 33.60 and 33.80 during the day, Krungthai Bank market strategist Poon Panichpibool predicted.
Poon said that investors should speculate on the upcoming bond auction. Foreign investors will invest in Thai stocks if the demand was more than expected, which caused the baht to strengthen.
ADVERTISEMENT
Moreover, the baht momentum was supported by investors buying baht as Thailand will open in November. The baht will strengthen heavily soon after the Prime Minister announced the country will open for fully vaccinated foreign tourists without a mandatory quarantine.
However, the dollar still strengthens because investors are in a risk-off state. Investors also speculated that the US Federal Reserve will decrease the quantitive easing (QE) in November which cause the dollar to not weaken soon. The market will be in a risk-on state if investors ease their worries about risk factors and the Fed is hesitant to decrease the QE in November.
Poon added the baht will not strengthen clearly soon in the short term as the dollar strengthened and the basic factor was not fully recovered.
The baht’s key support level would be from 33.50 to 33.60, the level some importers are waiting for so they can buy dollars, he added.
The market was in the risk-on state after the crude oil price was the highest in seven years which caused inflation and might cause stagflation if the economy is slow down.
Meanwhile, the market was worry about Chinese business regulation after China investigated the relationship with companies executives and government officials.
The market is also keeping an eye on Evergrande’s crisis after the company did not pay interest to bond investors, which Evergrande will have 30 days to pay them.
Thailand has continued attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first nine months of this year, with an increased number of investment project applications, Thailand’s Board of Investment (BoI) said.
The total value of FDI applications received by the BoI from January to September rose 220 per cent compared to the same period last year, to a total value of Bt372.06 billion from 587 projects, the latest data from the BoI shows.
“Top three countries that have most investment value are Japan (Bt67.8 billion), the United States (Bt26.9 billion) and Singapore (Bt26.8) billion,” said Duangjai Asawachintachit, BoI secretary-general.
“In the first nine months of 2021, BoI have received applications from 1,273 projects with total investment value of Bt520.6 billion, increasing 23 per cent and 140 per cent year on year respectively,” she said. “This number is also higher than total investment value of the whole 2020 at Bt432 billion, and higher than the average investment value before Covid-19 situation (2015-2019) at Bt483.6 billion.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Duangjai further added that the applications for investments in the targeted industries, led by electronics and electrical sector, medical equipment sector and petrochemical and chemical sector, represented Bt269.7 billion or 52 per cent of the total.
Of the total investment project applications, 134 projects focus on improving manufacturing efficiency and capacity, with total investment value of Bt14.8 billion. “One of these projects are Western Digital’s adaptation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) at scale in its facility,” she said. “The project has resulted in the World Economic Forum on September 27 welcomed the facility from Thailand to prestigious Global Lighthouse Network for the first time. This achievement has proven that Thailand has a strong potential as an investment destination that will drive businesses to full scale industrial revolution.”
The price of gold crashed by THB250 in morning trade on Tuesday.
A9.28am report from the Gold Traders Association showed the buying price of gold bar at THB27,800 per baht weight and selling price at THB27,900, while the buying and selling price of gold ornaments is THB27,303.16 and THB28,400, respectively.
At close on Monday, the buying price of gold bar was THB28,050 per baht weight and selling price THB28,150, while gold ornaments were THB27,545.72 and THB28,650, respectively.
ADVERTISEMENT
The spot gold price on Tuesday morning was hovering around US$1,758 (THB58,805) per ounce after Comex gold at close on Monday dropped by $1.7 to $1,755.7 per ounce due to pressure from the appreciation of the US dollar, including the forecast that The US Federal Reserve will not postpone its plans to cut the quantitative easing asset purchase program even as the US non-farm payrolls had expanded lower than expected in September.
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index rose by 10.69 points or 0.65 per cent to 1,644.13 on Tuesday morning, witnessing a high of 1,646.58 and a low of 1,643.14 in opening trade.
Krungsri Securities expected the day’s index would rise to the resistance line between 1,645 and 1,660 points after the government announced to allow fully vaccinated travellers from low-risk countries to enter the country without mandatory quarantine from November 1 this year.
It added that the index also gained positive sentiment from the rising oil price of over US$80 per barrel.
ADVERTISEMENT
“However, investors should beware of mass sell-off of shares to escape risk of uncertainty over the US Federal Reserve signalling it would taper its quantitative easing programme,” Krungsri Securities said.
It also recommended buying of the following companies’ shares as an investment strategy:
▪︎ AOT, AAV, BA, MINT, KBANK, SCB, CPN, CRC, HMPRO, CPALL, AMATA, WHA, MAJOR, BTS and BEM, which benefit from the country reopening.
▪︎ PTT, PTTEP, TOP, PTTGC, SPRC, BCP and IVL, which benefit from rising oil price and gross refining margin.
The SET Index closed at 1,633.44 on Monday, down 5.97 points or 0.36 per cent. Transactions totalled 82.97 billion baht with an index high of 1,646.50 and a low of 1,629.95.
Three U.S.-based economists were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their work drawing conclusions by observing the cause and effect of real-world economic actions.
In Stockholm, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences divided this year’s prize between David Card of the University of California at Berkeley, who received one-half of the award, and two other economists, Joshua Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Guido Imbens of Stanford University.
The men will share 10 million Swedish kronor, or more than $1.1 million.
ADVERTISEMENT
Card was honored for his pioneering work in labor economics. Angrist and Imbens were recognized for their methodological contributions to an understanding of causal relationships, the prize committee said.
The ceremony was live-streamed on the institution’s website.
The committee highlighted Card’s study of the impact of wages on employment. After New Jersey raised its minimum wage in 1992, he analyzed employment patterns along the border with Pennsylvania and concluded that the higher wage had not discouraged hiring.
Card’s work upended the conventional wisdom and led to additional research showing that a firm’s behavior often swamps the impact of wage policy.
Angrist and Imbens developed a framework demonstrating what “precise conclusions” can be drawn from observations, which has been widely adopted by researchers working with observational data, the committee said.
“Card’s studies of core questions for society and Angrist and Imbens’s methodological contributions have shown that natural experiments are a rich source of knowledge. Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit to society,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Economic Sciences Prize Committee.
Taken together, the three economists have revolutionized empirical work in the social sciences, the committee said.
“I was absolutely thrilled to hear the news,” said Imbens, 58, who noted that the three men are friends and that Angrist had been the best man at his wedding.
The Stanford economist joined the award news conference by telephone.
Card received the news in a phone call from the Nobel committee’s Adam Smith, which he “suspected might be a ‘made-up name,’ ” according to a Nobel tweet. In a photo taken by his wife, Cynthia Gessele, Card was shown receiving the news, clad in a bathrobe.
The committee was unable to reach Angrist before the ceremony, according to Eva Mork, a Swedish economist and member of the prize committee.
Card is a U.S. and Canadian citizen, while Angrist has joint Israeli-U.S. citizenship. Imbens is a Dutch and American national.
The men were honored for their work showing what conclusions can be drawn from observations of economic forces when it is not possible to conduct randomized experiments, Mork said.
The committee said it can be hard to analyze questions such as the impact of immigration on employment or the income boost linked to additional years of education. “These questions are difficult to answer because we have nothing to use as a comparison. We do not know what would have happened if there had been less immigration or if that person had not continued studying,” the committee said.
But Card, Angrist and Imbens showed that it is possible to reach important conclusions about the effects of social and economic policies by observing natural experiments, “situations in which chance events or policy changes result in groups of people being treated differently, in a way that resembles clinical trials in medicine,” the committee said.
Monday’s announcement comes amid shifts in economic thought on multiple fronts. The global economy is struggling to escape the delta coronavirus variant, leaving economists puzzling over unusual developments in labor markets, supply chains and product pricing.
In winning the Nobel, Card, Angrist and Imbens join previous winners such as Paul Samuelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.
Last year, two Stanford University economists, Paul Milgrom, a professor of humanities and sciences, and Robert Wilson, an emeritus professor of management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, were honored for pioneering work in auction theory.
Before Monday’s announcement, a total of 86 laureates had received the prize, known formally as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Traders are preparing for the Bank of England to lift borrowing costs by the end of this year after two officials moved to reinforce signals of an imminent increase to curb inflation.
Money markets priced in at least 15 basis points of tightening by the BOE’s December 2021 meeting on Monday, according to sterling overnight index swaps, which would take the key rate to 0.25%. The market was previously betting the first increase would be in February.
Michael Saunders, one of the most hawkish members of the Monetary Policy Committee, suggested in remarks published Saturday that investors were right to bring forward bets on rate hikes. Hours earlier, Governor Andrew Bailey warned of a potentially “very damaging” period of inflation unless policy makers take action.
ADVERTISEMENT
The repricing reflects mounting concern over the lasting impact of the latest surge in prices, with consumers facing higher costs for energy and goods, due in part to shortages that resulted from the nation’s departure from the European Union. A market-based measure of inflation 10 years from now rose to more than 4% last week, double the BOE’s target.
The BOE “appears concerned about inflation credibility,” said Robert Wood, Bank of Amercia’s U.K. economist, adding that policy makers will “hike early” to avoid more increases later. BofA expects a 15-basis-point increase in December, followed by another 25 basis points in February, in line with market bets.
Money markets see an additional quarter-of-a-percentage point hike to take the key rate to 0.75% by August. That’s even as some investors warn that higher interest rates risk undermining the U.K.’s fragile recovery from the pandemic.
“We see the BOE jawboning in a bid to ward off the threat of inflation expectations becoming entrenched,” said Richard McGuire, head of rates strategy at Rabobank. “It seems remarkable to conceive of the BOE increasing borrowing costs as we head into Christmas.”
The moves reverberated across U.K. markets, with government bonds falling across the curve, sending benchmark 10-year yields to as high as 1.22%, a level last seen in May 2019.
“Saunders is not quite representative of the entire MPC as he tends to be the most extreme,” said Peter Schaffrik, global macro strategist at RBC Europe. “Bailey’s comments are important as he seems to embrace tightening as well.”
A combination of higher energy prices, supply chain disruptions and rising wages in some industries has undercut the BOE’s original view that much of the jump in prices will prove transitory. The central bank last month said it expects inflation to exceed 4% in the last quarter.
Aluminum jumped to its highest price since 2008 as a deepening power crisis squeezes supplies of the energy-intensive metal thats used in everything from beer cans to iPhones.
Industry insiders like to joke that aluminum is basically “solid electricity.” Each ton of metal takes about 14 megawatt hours of power to produce, enough to run an average U.K. home for more than three years. If the 65 million ton-a-year aluminum industry was a country, it would rank as the fifth-largest power consumer in the world.
That meant aluminum was one of the first targets in China’s efforts to curb industrial energy usage. Even beyond the current power crisis, Beijing has placed a hard cap on future capacity that promises to end years of over-expansion and raises the prospect of deep global deficits. Now, with energy costs surging across Asia and Europe, there’s growing risk of further supply cuts.
ADVERTISEMENT
For investors looking to bet on a future price spike, LME options contracts offer a popular and low-risk way.
In recent weeks, investors have been buying calls with strike prices of up to $4,000 a ton, according to traders active in the market — effectively betting that prices could move significantly beyond that level to reach new all-time highs.
“It feels very much like a structural hedge-fund play,” said Keith Wildie, head of trading at Romco Metals, who’s been trading LME options for more than 20 years. “What they’re positioning for is a significant market dislocation, and a sharp move higher in the price.”
As the global metals world prepared to gather in London for the annual LME Week, signs of pressure on the aluminum industry have continued to mount. China’s State Council announced Friday it will allow higher power prices in a bid to ease the worsening energy crunch. In the Netherlands, aluminum producer Aldel will curtail production from this week due to high electricity prices, Dutch Broadcaster NOS reported.
A number of aluminum plants in China are being mothballed and the country’s production has probably peaked, at least in the short term, said Mark Hansen, CEO at London-based trading house Concord Resources. With the market in a deficit and needing to stimulate investment in new production outside China, prices could hit $3,400 a ton in the next 12 months, he said.
Next, traders and analysts say investors are watching for a possible hit to Chinese aluminum exports. With its own production under pressure and demand booming, the country has been importing ever-greater quantities of primary metal. However, it’s still exporting huge volumes of semi-finished aluminum, in part supported by tax rebates.
“Given the acuteness of the power shortages and the curtailments we’ve seen, it just doesn’t seem rational for China to be exporting that volume of aluminium products every single month,” James Luke, commodities fund manager at Schroders, said by phone from London. “It’s essentially just a net export of energy resources.”
Analysts including those at Goldman Sachs say there’s potential for Beijing to lower or remove the value-added tax rebates on exports to slow the flow of metal beyond its borders. With China likely to continue importing huge volumes of aluminum next year, that could leave the rest of the world desperately short, and raises the risk of a violent price spike.
Separately, prices got an extra boost Monday after the European Union imposed an anti-dumping duty on flat-rolled aluminum from China, although it suspended the duty initially for nine months and excluded some key material, including metal used by the drinks cans, car and aircraft industries.
This year’s surge in aluminum prices would typically prompt producers elsewhere to reopen old plants and consider adding new supply. Yet the even-bigger jump in power costs is putting pressure on smelters and may make restarts difficult.
As an example, if a smelter in Germany was exposed to one-month baseload rates for power, it would need to pay about $4,000 for the energy needed to produce a ton of metal, far outstripping current aluminum prices.
“The global metal market in 2022 will be the tightest it’s ever been,” Eoin Dinsmore, head of aluminum primary and products research at CRU, said by phone from London. “The rest of the world cannot deliver these quantities to China indefinitely.”
Chinese builders are looking to payment extensions or debt exchanges to avoid default on imminent bond obligations as liquidity conditions tighten for the real estate sector.
Modern Land (China) is asking holders for a three-month extension on $250 million dollar bond due to mature Oct. 25 while also announcing two top executives plan to loan the builder about $125 million. Xinyuan Real Estate has proposed paying just 5% of principal on a note due Oct. 15 and swapping that debt for bonds due 2023. Fitch Ratings called the move a distressed debt exchange while downgrading the firm to C.
Modern Land and Xinyuan respectively have $1.35 billion and $760 million of dollar bonds outstanding, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In comparison, China Evergrande Group has $19.2 billion.
ADVERTISEMENT
Beijing’s clampdown on the real estate sector and uncertainty over Evergrande’s future have sent the nation’s dollar junk bond yields soaring to their highest in about a decade. That debt market, dominated by developers, saw notes fall as much as 10 cents on the dollar Monday, according to credit traders.
Rising borrowing costs have increased refinancing risks as firms may struggle to access the offshore bond market. That could trigger a wave of defaults across the real estate sector. Property firms’ missed payments have made up 36% of the record $27.2 billion (175 billion yuan) in onshore corporate bond defaults this year, Bloomberg-compiled data show.
Still, for borrowers that can afford it, the selloff may also provide an opportunity to buy back bonds at deep discount and help shore up balance sheets. Yuzhou Group Holdings’ chairman recently bought $5.6 million of the company’s dollar notes through his associates, according to a filing last week.
In the meantime, investors are still waiting for clarity from Evergrande over a potential restructuring or solution for its liquidity crisis which some analysts say could drag on for months. Some of the firm’s bondholders fear Evergrande may sell assets that they’re counting on to back up their claims if the company collapses. It has $148 million due Monday involving three dollar-bond coupons, Bloomberg-compiled data show, after having given no signs it made interest payments expected in September.
More defaults from Chinese property firms are expected under Beijing’s deleveraging campaign, said Kenneth Ho, Goldman Sachs Group’s head of Asia credit strategy. The sector “needs some kind of policy change in order to restore confidence.”
Peer-to-peer lending websites to take off in Thailand soon
SootinClaimon.Com 