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.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS