Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin yesterday unveiled a roadmap to develop the country as a regional hub for tourism, wellness and electric vehicle (EV) production, as he bids to draw much-needed foreign investment to jump-start an economy saddled with high household debt and deflation.
New initiatives to cement Thailand’s position as a tourism, wellness and medical hub are to be centered around visa waivers and a planned single visa for countries including Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, Srettha said in a televised address.
The country will also take steps to emerge as an aviation and logistics hub, he said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The prime minister is to travel to Europe next month to invite companies such as Volkswagen AG and Maserati SpA to invest in Thailand, where manufacturing accounts for 27 percent of economic output.
On Wednesday, Srettha’s government announced a slew of incentives to promote local production of battery cells, and boost the adoption of new-energy buses and trucks.
Thailand has aggressively rolled out incentives and attracted a flurry of foreign investments in the past few years, particularly from Chinese EV makers. The country, often referred to as “the Detroit of Asia,” is targeting 30 percent of its vehicle output to be electric by 2030.
The country expects to draw about 1 trillion baht (US$27.9 billion) in fresh investment into the automobile industry during the government’s four-year tenure, Srettha said, adding that spending commitments have already totaled 150 billion baht since he assumed power six months ago.
Srettha, who is also the finance minister, has clashed with the central bank on the approach to revive Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy. While his government has announced a raft of subsidies and loan waivers to ease the cost of living pressures, the central bank has resisted pressures to cut the policy rate even after data this week showed the economy contracted in the final quarter of last year from the preceding three months.
The former property tycoon wants to lift the pace of annual economic growth to 5 percent during his term, and has announced measures including visa waivers for Chinese visitors and debt moratoriums for farmers, students and small businesses.
However, he has faced hurdles in his push to implement his party’s key election plank — a cash handout to almost every Thai adult. The program’s price tag of 500 billion baht, to be funded through borrowing, has drawn criticism from opposition parties and push-back from the central bank.
The government is to invest in roads, rail networks and ports to develop the country as a logistics hub in the region, Srettha said yesterday.
The government plans to push ahead with a US$29 billion dollar landbridge to connect the Indian and Pacific oceans by bypassing the Malacca Strait, he said.
The government is also committed to developing the nation’s financial markets, including its US$478 billion stock market, to attract foreign investors, especially sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, he said.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
IRANIAN THREATS: Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami said that it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to attack Iran and if it did ‘we will strike you again painfully’ Israel yesterday bombed a Syrian coastal city, while the US conducted multiple strikes on targets in Yemen nearly a month into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran, which on Oct. 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel. Israel has vowed to retaliate for the strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami yesterday said in a speech that Tehran would hit Israel “painfully” if it attacks Iranian targets. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the