PM faces joint push on money-laundering laws

Payungsak Chartsuthipol, chairman of the Joint Private Standing Committee, which comprises the Kingdom’s three most powerful private-sector organisations – the Federa-tion of Thai Indus-tries, the Board of Trade of Thailand and the Thai Bankers Association – yesterday said it was essential that the new law be implemented before next February.
The organisations are pushing for the law ahead of a review of the Kingdom’s status by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF).
It is hoped that the FATF will remove Thailand from its “Dark Grey List”, which would unlock a financial-transaction slowdown that has begun to affect Thai businesses.
Twatchai Yongkittikul, secretary-general of the Thai Bankers Association, said a Thai firm had, for example, already been denied a loan worth hundreds of millions of baht from a French bank for machinery purchase, because Thailand is on the international organisation’s list.
The Thai business sector has experienced negative consequences since the Kingdom was placed on the list in February because of a lack of anti-money-laundering laws aimed at countering terrorism, he said.
Businesspeople are hopeful that the laws will be implemented by the end of January, ahead of the annual review by the FATF’s Inter-national Cooperation Review Group the following month, he added.
Other industries, in particular tourism, are also facing difficulties in conducting business overseas, as customers and trading partners now require more documentation before committing to doing business with them.
Phongsak Assakul, chairman of the Board of Trade, said that if Thailand continued to lack the necessary laws to get its status upgraded, there could be a serious impact on Thai individuals, who may be unable to use credit cards overseas.
Meanwhile, the Joint Private Standing Committee has called for the government to handle measures to ease the rising cost of living carefully, as its price freeze could create problems for some businesses faced with higher production costs. [These paras repeated in 4A story] Payungsak, who is also chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries, said most food and consumer-goods manufacturers had maintained their retail prices to help curb the cost of living.
However, the government should also allow some producers to raise prices fairly if the face of higher costs. He said such companies would only do so based on the real cost of production.
Moreover, the government should control the cost of fuel and electricity to keep manufacturers’ costs down, he added.