BT2.3 TRN investment bill due in six-seven months

He ruled out any new banking or insurance licences to foreign investors.
“The government is drawing up a priority list of projects to invest in over the next seven years,” Kittiratt said during an interview with Nation Multimedia Group.
He said the process would take about six or seven months, after which the government will present an investment bill to Parliament for debate.
“The public and the opposition will have an opportunity to debate every project proposed by the government,” he said.
Presenting the bill will ensure transparency in the government’s investment projects, said Kittiratt, who is also deputy prime minister.
Many projects could be implemented simultaneously, such as road, airport, deep-sea ports, double-track railway and mass transit route extensions, he said.
A double-track railway between Nakhon Ratchasima passing through Chachoengsao province to the eastern seaboard is being considered, he said, as is a mass-transit route between Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports.
A motorway from Bangyai in Bangkok to the Myanmar border in Kanchanaburi province may also be built, as well as a double-track railway linking Bangkok to Ayutthaya province, in the first phase of a Bangkok to Chiang Mai link, said Kittiratt.
The government may need to borrow about Bt1.6 billion to Bt2 billion. The rest will be financed by public-private partnerships, he said.
New borrowing will not add much to the public debt, currently at Bt4.6 trillion or about 40 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), he said.
This is because the Bank of Thailand will pay off the sizeable debt of Bt1.14 trillion owed by the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF), said Kittiratt.
The spending will not push public debts near the limit of 60 per cent of GDP, he said.
Kittiratt was confident that the central bank could generate a profit and allocate this to pay off debt incurred during the bank bail-out during the 1997 financial crisis.
Asked about the central bank’s accounting loss worth Bt420 billion due partly to operations to keep the baht weak, Kittiratt said the assets held by the central bank would rise as the currency weakened.
Currently, the central bank holds international reserves worth US$173 billion (Bt5.5 trillion), considered to be a large amount.
“As a policymaker, I have a responsibility to allocate funding from one sector to another, and the central bank holds a lot of liquidity,” said Kittiratt.
He said the Finance Ministry would sell its 25-per-cent stake in TMB Bank to a foreign bank if the price were right.
However, the government has no need to sell any assets for the time being, he said. He ruled out any liberalisation of the banking and insurance sectors for at least the next five years, saying, “Liberalisation of the financial sector is to be outlined step-by-step by the central bank,” he said.
Foreign partners are allowed to hold majority shares in banks and insurance firms, but there will be no new licences, said Kittiratt.
“Other countries understand that we have to be very careful about liberalisation of the financial sector; an ordinary firm going under doesn’t cause much trouble, but the collapse of a bank could cause severe damage to the economy,” he said.
Europe and the United States have long called for Thailand to open its financial market further.
“In the next five to eight years we may reconsider whether our expanded economy needs more banks,” Kittiratt said.