Government Savings Bank (GSB) is offering emergency loans for people hit by flooding from storm Dianmu.
Flash floods and runoff have been reported in 26 provinces in the Northeast and Central regions since last week, with Phichit, Chaiyaphum, Nakhon Ratchasima, Sukhothai, Chai Nat, Ayutthaya, Nakhon Sawan, Khon Kaen and Ubon Ratchathani badly affected.
GSB is offering emergency loans of up to Bt50,000 for people affected by flooding, with a grace period of three months for repayment. Those whose houses or property have been damaged by floods can get a home-repair loan of up to Bt1 million with 0 per cent interest in the first year. Homeowners can also apply for an additional loan of up to Bt300,000 to buy or fix furniture and other accessories damaged by the flood.
GSB said its home-related loans have a low interest of MMR-1.25 per cent per year, and customers can offer their house, apartment, land or farm as collateral provided they are unencumbered.
GSB has also boosted its loan limit for existing SME customers affected by the floods by 10 per cent, but not exceeding Bt5 million. The interest rate in the first year will be fixed at 3.5 per cent, while the following year will be set at MLR.
Loan information and application is available at any branch of GSB or by contacting the call centre at 1115.
Asean countries and South Korea agreed to improve their free trade agreement during the recent 18th Asean-Korea Economic Ministers Consultation held virtually from September 13 to 15, Vice Commerce Minister Sansern Samalapa said on Sunday.
“The meeting agreed to expand the existing Asean Korea Free Trade Agreement (AKFTA) to provide tax exemption for additional products and promote trading between Asean members and South Korea,” he said.
“The ministers also urged the countries to exchange know-how in Covid-19 management to speed up their economic recovery after the outbreak situation has improved.
“South Korea is especially eager to cooperate with Asean nations in various aspects, such as establishing an industrial innovation centre to promote innovation development and commercial adaptation of innovations in Southeast Asia and South Korea,” added Sansern.
“They are also interested in opening more research and development centres dedicated to startup businesses in the region.”
The meeting also urged Vietnam, the only country in Asean yet to sign the Asean-Korea Trade in Goods Agreement (AKTIGA), to do so as soon as they can so that the agreement can start taking full effect. The AKTIGA is expected to help Asean-Korean entrepreneurs speed up export and import processes by issuing and signing a product’s certificate of origin digitally.
Statistics from the Commerce Ministry indicate that South Korea is currently Thailand’s ninth biggest trade partner with total trade value at $9.1 billion in the first seven months of 2021, increasing 34.5 per cent from the same period of the previous year. Thailand’s exports to South Korea were valued at $3.39 billion, comprising rubber products, wood, computer components, chemicals and aluminium products. Thailand’s imports from South Korea were recorded at $5.71 billion, made up of iron, steel, and electronic circuits.
The baht opened at 33.41 to the US dollar on Monday, weakening from the previous closing rate of 33.24.
The Thai currency is likely to move between 33.25 and 33.40 during the day and between 33.20 and 33.60, Krungthai Bank market strategist Poon Panichpibool predicted.
He said the baht in the short term would weaken due to sales of Thai assets and the risk-off market.
If the Monetary Policy Committee remains unfazed about the Thai economy, the baht will stop weakening, he added.
Regarding the US currency, Poon predicted that the dollar index will move near 93 points, because of several positive factors in the market, namely, an extension of debt ceiling, political turbulence in Germany and the Evergrande issue.
The price of gold rose by THB50 in morning trade on Monday.
AGold Traders Association report at 9.25am said the buying price of a gold bar was THB27,700 per baht weight and selling price THB27,800, while gold ornaments cost THB27,197.04 and THB28,300, respectively.
At close on Saturday, the buying price of a gold bar was THB27,650 per baht weight and selling price THB27,750, while gold ornaments cost THB27,151.56 and THB28,250, respectively.
The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index rose by 3.54 points, or 0.22 per cent, to 1,634.69 on Monday morning.
The volume of total transactions was THB10.20 billion with an index high of 1,639.97 and a low of 1,634.09 in opening trade.
The 10 stocks with the highest trade value were KBANK, SCB, PTTEP, BBL, DTAC, TRUE, PTT, TIDLOR, ADVANC and MENA.
The SET Index closed at 1,631.15 on Thursday, up 11.56 points or 0.71 per cent. Transactions totalled 140.53 billion baht with an index high of 1,637.65 and a low of 1,623.00.
PDI’s shareholders greenlight moving forward with hospitality business by increasing ownership in Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok and Capella Bangkok to 100%, divesting the remaining solar energy business, and announcing a plan to rebrand to “Bound and Beyond” (BEYOND)
At Padaeng Industry Public Company Limited (PDI)’s Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) No. 2/2021 on September 23, 2021, shareholders approved the additional acquisition of 49% of the investment in the Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok and Capella Bangkok, the disposition of the solar energy business in Japan, and the change of the Company name from Padaeng Industry Public Company Limited to “Bound and Beyond Public Company Limited” with a new trading symbol of “BEYOND” in order to craft a new transformative image that is consistent with the company’s latest corporate strategy.
Four Season Hotel Bangkok
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Mr. Tommy Taechaubol, Managing Director, stated on behalf of the Board of Directors and managements, “I would like to express gratitude to fellow shareholders for their support in approving all agenda items and embracing the Company’s transformative vision and bold direction, particularly the additional acquisition of 49% in Urban Resort Hotel Company Limited (URH) and Waterfront Company Limited (WFH) from Landmark Holdings Company Limited (LH) to own 100% in one of Bangkok’s most prestigious luxury hotels, Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok and Capella Bangkok. These are brand-new ultra-luxury hotels situated along the Chao Phraya River with stunning facilities and managed by world-renowned hotel management companies, Four Seasons and Capella, and have received several accolades from reputable organizations. In the recent Travel + Leisure 2021 World’s Best Awards, Capella Bangkok was named the world’s fourth best hotel”
Capella Hotel Bangkok
Additionally, shareholders have approved the Company’s name change to “Bound and Beyond Public Company Limited” with a new trading symbol of “BEYOND” to reflect the Company’s imminent business strategies and innovative direction, as well as the Company’s goal of becoming a leading international hotel owner and manager.
“This is a significant milestone in the Company’s transition from commodity and energy business to hotel operator under the new name “BEYOND”, which started off with a significant successful investment in the Four Seasons Hotel Bangkok and Capella Bangkok that paves the way for the Company to become one of the leading hospitality players in Thailand. BEYOND also plans to launch a new flagship hotel under its own brand and management in the near future with a strategic prime location in the CBD area on Sathorn road, the investment cost is estimated to be around THB 1,500 million. Thailand’s tourism and hotel industries are significant part driving Thailand’s economy and are well recognized by international travelers worldwide. The Company believes this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a strategic acquisition at a discount value. With travel activities also showing signs of improvement, led by domestic travel, the Company believes that the tourism and hospitality industries will experience rapid growth once the current crisis has fully recovered” Mr. Taechaubol added.
Shareholders also approved the disposition of PDI Energy Company Limited (PDIE) to BAFS Clean Energy Corporation Limited (BC), a subsidiary of Bangkok Aviation Fuel Services Public Company Limited (BAFS), for approximately THB 768 million. PDIE owns the investment in two Japan solar energy plants with a combined capacity of 13 Megawatts. On March 1, 2021, the Company sold all solar energy plants in Thailand with a capacity of 36.4 Megawatts to BC, receiving THB 1,704.67 million. The proceeds from the sale of Japan’s solar energy plants are planned to redeem the existing debenture that is approaching its maturity and to fund future hotel investments.
The 21st branch of the health-shop-cum-supermarket, Golden Place, opened its doors near the Wat Phra Sri Mahathat BTS station in Bangkok’s Laksi area on Friday.
The shop, operated under Royal patronage, was opened in a special ceremony presided over by His Majesty’s secretary. Also present were directors and executives of the Suvarnachad Company.
The supermarket, located inside the Battalion Infantryman 11th Palace Guard Division compound, is surrounded by a beautiful garden and sports a spacious 100-car-capacity parking lot.
Operating under the concept “Think Health, Think Golden Place”, the shop offers a variety of health products as well as organic vegetables, fruits and produce grown under Royal projects.
This branch has the largest seafood zone, as well as a Golden Kitchen and Golden Coffee zone that serves Arabic coffee from the Mae Salong Royal Project in Chiang Rai.
Shoppers can also pick up clothes and souvenirs from different Royal projects.
Palace-run Golden Place supermarket opens new branch in LaksiPalace-run Golden Place supermarket opens new branch in Laksi
This Golden Place branch is open every day from 7am to 7.30pm due to current curfew restrictions. Under normal circumstances, it operates from 7am to 11pm. Products can also be bought via its official Line account @goldenplace or via www.goldenplace.co.th. Golden Place can also be found on Facebook and Instagram.
Fashion houses such as Stella McCartney and Victoria Beckham have long eschewed animal products in their wares, while automakers including Audi, BMW, Land Rover, and Tesla offer leather-free and sustainable interiors as options in their cars.
So far, Volvo is among the very few brands to say it will not offer any leather at all, even as an option, in any of its vehicles. Electric truckmaker Rivian currently offers only vegan “leather” seats in its R1T pickup, with no option for leather seating or trim.
The shift at Volvo will begin next year with the C40 Recharge, a plug-in electric SUV with a 200-plus mile driving range. It will continue until 2030, when Volvo’s by then all-electric lineup will have entirely phased out leather products. This is a decision driven as much by reading and predicting market trends as from concern for the ethical treatment of animals, Volvo executives tell Bloomberg Pursuits during a private video interview announcing these changes.
“We see our customer’s expectations are changing,” says Robin Page, the head of design for Volvo Cars. “They are changing their habits in fashion and products they are buying. They want to know more about the materials and where they are sourced from and where they come from, and people are much more aware of climate change and the effects on the planet.”
According to a report from Infinium Global Research quoted by Stuart Templar, Volvo’s director of global sustainability, the vegan leather market is expected to reach 73 billion euros ($85 billion) in value by 2025. By that time, a quarter of the materials in Volvo’s new cars will consist of recycled and bio-based content, says Page, and all of its immediate suppliers, including material suppliers, will use 100% renewable energy.
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“Consumers are increasingly focused not just on the end product but how it is produced,” adds Templar, “and that includes responsible sourcing.”
Volvo will introduce a new wool-blend option, made from certified suppliers, as the company looks to ensure full traceability and animal welfare in its materials supply chain. It will also offer Microtech, a suede-like textile made from recycled polyester, as well as components made from sustainably sourced flax and linen.
“There are premium alternatives to leather,” Page says. Previously, consumers viewed anything that isn’t leather as inferior; now that they understand more about climate change, they are changing their minds. Livestock, he says, is estimated to be responsible for around 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, with the majority coming from cattle farming. “Our ultimate aim is to get recycled natural materials, because that is the full sustainability part.”
Nordico, another new, non-leather material Volvo will be using, consists of textiles made from recycled material such as plastic (PET) bottles, wood remnants from sustainable forests in Sweden and Finland, and corks recycled from the wine industry.
The announcement comes amid what Volvo has called “really annoying” challenges in obtaining computer chips. In July, Volvo agreed to take control of its China ventures from parent Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., potentially boosting its valuation ahead of a planned share sale.
Volvo could earn a valuation of roughly $20 billion, with a listing expected by the end of September. Even if dwarfed by the estimated $80 billion initial public offering expected for electric pickup truck startup Rivian, Volvo’s would be among the biggest IPOs in Europe in 2021.
Taiwan request to join the Asian-Pacifics biggest working trade deal, coming just days after Chinas submitted its own bid, presents the member nations with a difficult choice – admit one, both or neither?
Both Beijing and Taipei have asked to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in the past week. That creates the possibility of a long and politicized application process, with the members divided between democracies such as Japan, Australia and Canada pushing for Taiwan’s accession, and Southeast Asian nations keen to remain in China’s good graces, making them vulnerable to pressure from Beijing to thwart Taipei’s bid.
Officials in Taipei are aware of the challenge they face.
“China always obstructs Taiwan’s room to maneuver on the international stage. This is something everyone’s aware of,” Taiwan’s chief trade negotiator John Deng said at a briefing Thursday. “So if China is able to join first, it’s clear that Taiwan’s application will be at risk.”
The original goal of the $13.5 trillion trade agreement was to create a western-led alliance to counterbalance China’s economic might in the Pacific region. While it was initially spearheaded by the U.S., Japan assumed a key role in reviving the plan after former President Donald Trump withdrew in 2017.
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CPTPP member countries account for over 24% of Taiwan’s international trade, according to a cabinet statement Thursday.
It will be a challenge for Taiwan to reach the required consensus among all 11 nations for its application to succeed, according to Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defense official who is now a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
“They will need to develop a smart strategy that reflects both their own domestic politics as well as the interests of key CPTPP members,” he said in a email Thursday. “Taiwan will have to satisfy many constituencies, but it might make sense to start with one big player, such as Japan, and work bilaterally to achieve Tokyo’s overt support, leveraging that support to convince other members to constructively engage Taipei.”
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen urged Japan to support her government’s efforts to join the deal in a tweet in Japanese Thursday, adding that her government has been preparing to join for the past five years and is prepared to accept all the rules.
Japan welcomed Taiwan’s bid and would respond “based on a strategic point of view and with the public’s understanding,” Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu said Thursday in New York, according to a Kyodo News report. That contrasts with his statements about China’s application last week, when he said that Japan would have to look properly at whether China was “ready to reach the high level of TPP.”
Joining the group would be seen as a major political coup for Tsai, who’s government views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign nation awaiting broader international recognition. However China claims the island as part of its territory and vehemently opposes any moves that imply separate statehood for Taiwan, such as joining international organizations.
Taiwan and China already peacefully coexist as members of the same trade organization as both are part of the World Trade Organization, although Taiwan is a member as “the Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.” Eager to eliminate as many political barriers as possible, Taiwan’s government used the same designation in its application to join the CPTPP.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office laid out its stance on a possible Taiwanese application earlier this month, saying in a statement on Sept. 8 that Taiwan must adhere to Beijing’s “one-China principle” and any other countries must avoid implying Taiwan is a sovereign country in their dealings with Taipei.
That likely means that China needs to join before Taiwan, and the official title of Taiwan can’t be the “Republic of China,” according to Henry Gao, associate professor of law at Singapore Management University, who has written extensively on Chinese law and the World Trade Organization.
In response to questions about Taiwan’s application, New Zealand’s foreign ministry referred to the island as “Chinese Taipei,” another moniker used to avoid diplomatic problems.
Jeremy Huai-Che Chiang, a former researcher at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation focusing on Southeast Asian relations, sees countries in the region as unlikely to upset China over Taiwan due to Beijing’s economic weight and past record of punitive measures.
However, “I do think this is smart maneuvering on the part of Taipei,” he said via message Thursday. “Given that consensus is needed for membership, and the different geopolitical times that we are in right now, it will likely put a ‘two-or-nothing’ pressure on existing members.”
U.S. stocks rallied for a second day as investors embraced the Federal Reserves bullish economic outlook while downplaying the risk of contagion from turmoil in Chinese debt markets. Yields jumped worldwide after the Bank of England moved closer to raising rates and the dollar weakened.
The S&P 500 registered its biggest two-day gain since July, jumping 2.2%, with the Fed signaling on Wednesday that it’s on track to start scaling back asset purchases this year as the recovery takes hold. Yields climbed globally led by the U.K. market, where the 10-year gilt yield topped 0.90% for the first time since May after the Bank of England opened the door to a 2021 rate increase to contain a surge in inflation. Treasury yields surged, led by the 30-year, which rose about 12 basis points in the biggest increase in more than a year.
“A hawkish Fed was surprisingly welcomed by equity markets as it was seen as a confirmation of continued strength and ‘substantial progress’ made by the economy in recovering from the COVID shock,” said Anu Gaggar, global investment strategist at Commonwealth Financial Network. “While we are far from the end of QE and near-zero rates, the tide seems to be beginning to change. So far, the market had welcomed bad news as good news, but a market reacting to signs of an economy able to stand on its own without the monetary policy crutches is a refreshing change.”
Even with Thursday’s jump in yields, confidence is building that markets can ride out a pullback in Fed stimulus, unlike 2013 when the so-called taper tantrum triggered large losses in bonds and equities. Investors are betting that the economic and profit recovery will be strong enough to outweigh a reduction in asset purchases, while ultra-low rates will continue to support riskier assets even as concerns linger about contagion from China’s real-estate woes.
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“The turbo-charged taper — a little bit of a surprise, it was coming in a relatively short period that they’re planning for this, but the markets are OK with that at the end of the day,” Paul Donovan, UBS’s global chief economist, said during a Bloomberg TV interview.
Meanwhile, the British pound rallied and gilts declined as traders brought forward wagers on a Bank of England rate hike to 0.25% after officials said developments since its August meeting appear to have strengthened the case for modest tightening.
Stocks briefly pared gains during European market hours after a report that Chinese authorities signaled reluctance to bail out Evergrande, even as Beijing injected more cash into the financial system and regulators instructed the embattled property developer to avoid a near-term default.
Fears of an Evergrande failure have caused a sharp rise in borrowing costs for other junk-rated Chinese developers and cast doubt on the health of some smaller Chinese banks.
Elsewhere, emerging-market stocks climbed for a third day. Turkey’s lira slumped to record low against the dollar after the central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates. Oil gained and gold declined, while Bitcoin steadied around $44,000.
Here are key events to watch this week:
– Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Fed Governor Michelle Bowman and Vice Chairman Richard Clarida discuss pandemic recovery, Friday
Here are the main moves in markets:
– – –
– The S&P 500 rose 1.2% as of 4:03 p.m. New York time
– The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.9%
– The Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.5%
– The MSCI World index rose 1%
– – –
– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot index fell 0.4%
– The euro rose 0.5% to $1.1740
– The British pound rose 0.7% to $1.3723
– The Japanese yen fell 0.5% to 110.28 per dollar
– – –
– The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced 12 basis points to 1.42%
– Germany’s 10-year yield advanced seven basis points to -0.26%
– Britain’s 10-year yield advanced 11 basis points to 0.91%
– – –
– West Texas Intermediate crude rose 1.4% to $73.21 a barrel
Four Season Hotel Bangkok
Capella Hotel Bangkok
Palace-run Golden Place supermarket opens new branch in Laksi
Palace-run Golden Place supermarket opens new branch in Laksi
Palace-run Golden Place supermarket opens new branch in Laksi
Palace-run Golden Place supermarket opens new branch in Laksi
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