Briefs

The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC) has affirmed that it has up to Bt220 billion cash on hand to support the government’s rice-pledging scheme even if the Commerce Ministry cannot repay on time the money earned from releasing |the rice from its existing stockpiles.
The bank reported Bt9.6 billion profit in the previous fiscal year, partly driven by the rice-pledging scheme, which generated about Bt4 billion in income. The bank’s financial status is still strong, with a capital-adequacy ratio of up to 11.22 per cent.
BAAC president Luck Vajananawat said that the company is quite ready to process the rice-pledging scheme. The Commerce Ministry had a plan to return Bt220 billion cash totally to the BAAC and they had already returned Bt102 billion to the BAAC at the end of March this year. The rest will be gradually returned to the bank.
The government anticipates about 7 million tonnes of off-season rice from the 2012-13 planting season to enter the rice-pledging project and will require Bt105 billion. If the Commerce Ministry is not able to release the rice from its stockpiles and get cash in return from the project, BAAC will spend the money in advance. The Cabinet, however, has agreed to repay such money to BAAC.

City ‘powered by alternative energy’
The Federation of Thailand Industries (FTI) will propose to the Industry Ministry late this month to consider creating a city powered by alternative energy on 2,000 rai of land, Pichai Tinsuntisook, chairman of the FTI’s renewable energy industry club.
The whole city should use power and fuel produced from only alternative energy. If the government gives a nod to the plan, the feasibility study is expected to take eight months to finish. The government should invest on basic infrastructure, while the private sector should be invited to invest on alternative enery-fuelled power plants. The whole project should take three years to be completed. The city is modelled on Symbio City in Stockholm, Sweden.

Aluminium maker to expand plant
SUS Corp, the parent company of SUS (Thailand) Co, which develops, produces and sells machinery, equipment and unit products for factory automation, furniture, building materials and components to the world market, is looking to further expand its factory in Lamphun.
The company made extensive investment in 2008.

Toshiba forms new Thai unit
Toshiba Corporation has established a wholly owned subsidiary in Thailand with the responsibility of enhancing the group's presence and capabilities across a comprehensive range of social-infrastructure businesses in Southeast Asia.
Toshiba Asia Pacific (Thailand) Co will support the group’s operations in the social-infrastructure sectors of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia and promote Toshiba's participation in major industrial |projects. The social-infrastructure businesses include power generation, transmission and distribution, transport,  and smart community businesses.
Spurred by economic, population growth and modernisation, the social-infrastructure business in Southeast Asia, especially the Mekong economic region, is expected to expand significantly in coming years. Governments in the region are expected to channel more than US$1.6 trillion (Bt46 trillion) into infrastructure projects from 2010 to 2020.

Offshore M&As take hold
Asia-Pacific companies significantly tapped opportunities beyond regional shores for mergers and acquisitions last year, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said in its recent report “The Credit Cloud: China and Japan Lead the Asia-Pacific In the Hunt for Outbound M&As”.
“We saw that Chinese and Japanese companies are leading the Asia-Pacific corporate expansion offshore. They have made a few mega M&A deals that each amount to more than US$10 billion,” or Bt290 billion, S&P credit analyst Terry Chan said.
“However, M&A deals within the region remained relatively low, compared [with] similar activity in the US and Europe.”
Asia’s high GDP growth over the past decade had spurred a rapid rise in M&A volumes to a peak in 2007, albeit from a low base in 2002. In line with other regions, Asia-Pacific M&A activity dropped sharply during the 2008-09 global financial crisis before staging a recovery in 2010 and 2011.
However, concerns about a sharp slowdown in China’s growth in 2012 saw Asia-Pacific M&A transactions within the region fall back to around the levels seen in 2008.