Japan's envoy tells deputy PM he favours world trade HQ in Thailand
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Japan is eyeing Thailand for use as a trade hub and is happy the Kingdom is changing its regulations to facilitate the setting up of an international trading headquarters in the country, according to a Thai deputy prime minister.
After a meeting yesterday with Shigekazu Sato, the Japanese ambassador to Thailand, Pridiyathorn Devakula said he had given the ambassador an update on the massive Dawei deep-sea port and industrial-estate project in Myanmar.
The deputy PM said he also told Sato that this country was in the process of upgrading its Regional Operating Headquarters into an international trading headquarters.
“The Japanese ambassador asked whether we were going to build an international trading headquarters here and I told him yes. We are going to do it because Thailand is a big manufacturing country that has expanded many production bases to various countries and we have numerous products to offer.
“But we’ve never had an international trading headquarters in the country because we have so many tax and non-tax regulations, which have to be amended to increase our competitiveness against Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.”
Pridiyathorn said the government would change those regulations to match neighbouring countries so large corporations set up trading headquarters in Thailand, which would increase cross-border trading activities and in turn generate more income for the country.
Pridiyathorn, a former Bank of Thailand governor, also serves as economic adviser to the military regime. He said his agency was working on proposals to change the regulations, which were expected to be complete in two weeks before being presented to the Cabinet. There were many regulations in various ministries to amend.
Regarding the Dawei project, he said it was entering the “full phase” of Phase 1 but Phase 2 had yet to begin because Thailand was waiting to hear back from Myanmar. Thailand had no objection to that and was willing to talk to Myanmar about the second phase.
He said Japan was ready to join the second phase after the first phase was done but it would be up to Myanmar to decide when talks on this began, because the project was in its territory.
In terms of government bonds, Pridiyathorn said the government was still compiling numbers and was waiting for the subcommittee handling the matter to figure out the total debt from the overthrown elected government’s rice-pledging scheme before closing the account.
That was being done so the government knew how many bonds needed to be issued to cover the debt.
After the first day of the regime’s own populist scheme of direct subsidies to farmers, Pridiyathorn said everything went smoothly. This was because the Interior and Agriculture and Cooperatives ministries had sent representatives to monitor the disbursements with local authorities to make sure the money got into the accounts of registered farmers.
