Unrest in Thailand's Muslim south has scared off tourists and cut rubber production, hurting the country's economic growth, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday.
Shortly after Thaksin vowed to restore peace in a month in the region where more than 200 people have been killed since January, a bomb exploded in front of a judge's house in Narathiwat province. No one was hurt.
"One factor that hurt our growth in the first quarter this year was the unrest in the south," Thaksin said in a weekly radio address.
The country's GDP for the first quarter of the year grew only 6.5 percent from the same period last year, compared with 7.8 percent annual growth in the previous quarter, the national planning agency said recently.
"The unrest has been reported worldwide, which has scared off many potential tourists," Thaksin said.
"Tourism didn't grow as much as we expected," he said. He did not give details.
Authorities have blamed Muslim militants for daily explosions and killings in recent months that have revived memories of a separatist insurgency that plagued the region in the 1970s and 1980s but almost petered out in the 1990s.
Despite sending in thousands of troops and promising millions of dollars in development aid, Thaksin's government has failed to stop the violence in the Malay-speaking region, which borders Muslim Malaysia.
About 2 million tourists visited Thailand in the quarter to March, down from 2.03 million in the same period a year ago, the tourism ministry said in April.
Tourism generates about 6 percent of GDP and had just rebounded from an outbreak of SARS in Asia last year that lopped 10 percent off last year's arrivals.
Australia and the US have advised their citizens against unnecessary travel to the three southernmost provinces -- Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala -- following clashes on April 28 in which security forces killed 108 militants.
The area is about 350km to the south of the resort island of Phuket.
Thaksin said the violence had prevented rubber workers from going out to tap rubber at night, hurting production.
"Despite good prices in the global markets, rubber volume from the three southern provinces is low because people are worried about their safety," Thaksin said.
"I've ordered troops to protect them to resume their normal rubber tapping soonest," he said.
Rubber industry officials say output is bound to be hit in the three provinces, which produce 200,000 tonnes of rubber a year, about a tenth of the country's production. Most is sold to Japan, China and the US.
The latest violence took place in Narathiwat town yesterday when a bomb made of ammonium nitrate was set off by a mobile phone signal near the home of a judge. It caused some minor damage but no injuries.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
The global server market is expected to grow 12.8 percent annually this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers projected to account for 16.5 percent, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure by major cloud service providers (CSPs), market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. Global AI server shipments this year are expected to increase 28 percent year-on-year to more than 2.7 million units, driven by sustained demand from CSPs and government sovereign cloud projects, TrendForce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) told the Taipei Times. Demand for GPU-based AI servers, including Nvidia Corp’s GB and Vera Rubin rack systems, is expected to remain high,
RSS