Briefs

Consumer prices declined by 0.04 per cent year on year in May, the first decline in 14 months, after sharp drops in prices of food, particularly fruits and vegetables, according to Commerce Ministry.
Sureeporn Sahawat, deputy director of the ministry’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office, attributed a 26.56-per-cent plunge in prices of fresh vegetables and 2.55-per-cent decrease in fruit prices for the May decline. 
Last year, Thailand suffered droughts that led to higher prices of fruits and vegetables, she said.

PTT to revise 5-year plan midyear

PTT will revise its Bt1.6-trillion five-year investment plan midyear, especially for investments in the Eastern Economic Corridor, company president and chief executive officer Tevin Vongvanich told a news conference yesterday.
He said that normally the company revised its business plans every six months.
Under the five-year (2017-21) plan, the PTT group set aside an investment budget of Bt1.6 trillion, with another Bt200 billion as a reserve budget for other investment opportunities. 
Up to Bt339 billion of the total group investment budget is for PTT itself, and the rest for others in the group such as PTT Global Chemical and Global Green Chemical, he said. 

FL Technics approved supplier of Nok Air, Bangkok Airways 
Asiana Airlines, AirAsia X, Nok Air, Bangkok Airways, Korea’s T’way Airlines and Indonesia’s GMF AeroAsia have awarded FL Technics, a global provider of one-stop-shop aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services, status as an approved supplier of aircraft parts. 
With its own warehouses in London as well as other locations across Europe and Asia, FL Technics will support the carriers and MRO providers with various parts for the Airbus A320 family, Boeing 737 and other aircraft types. 
Having a local parts support team in Bangkok as well as an AOG (aircraft on ground) desk in Vilnius, Lithuania, FL Technics says it is able to provide around-the-clock parts support to its Asian customers. 
“In just two years, our spare-parts sales in the Asian-Pacific region grew by over 10 times,” said Zilvinas Lapinskas, CEO of FL Technics. 
“We have a local support team and several locally based stocks with support from our London warehouse. This allowed us to win the trust of Asia’s leading airlines, becoming their approved supplier. 
“We certainly aim at eventually becoming more than just a spare-parts supplier for them, but an MRO, training and engineering partner as well.” 

PEA rolls out ‘Thailand Lighting Fair’ roadshow in 
The Provincial Electricity Authority, Messe Frankfurt and the Exhibiz Co have kicked off international roadshows to publicise the “Thailand Lighting Fair”, which will take place from November 16-18 at the Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Centre (Bitec).
The first roadshow is taking place in Indonesia. 
In addition to its flagship theme of lighting technology, the 2017 edition of the fair will incorporate a building-technology zone to follow Messe Frankfurt’s world-class “Light+Building” series and will run concurrently with “Secutech Thailand” under the main theme “Smart City, Safe City”.
Siribhusaya Ungphakorn, minister counsellor (commercial) at the Thai Embassy in Jakarta, inaugurated a panel discussion, saying that the Thai government had earmarked Bt27.9 billion worth of investment for 2017-21 in four digital areas. 
The Indonesia roadshow is designed to open the door for economic ties and collaboration between Thailand and Indonesia and generate interest in the new opportunities that will arise through Thailand’s exhibition platform.

TAT, Online Tourism Club take aim at low-quality tour 
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and the recently established Online Tourism Club (Thailand) are seeking ways to minimise online operators that sell lower-quality tour packages, especially in the Chinese FIT (free independent traveller) sector, to protect the interests of both tourists and Thai tourism-service providers.
TAT governor Yuthasak Supasorn said tourism was vital to Thailand’s economy, so it was the job of the public and private sectors to work together to ensure high standards as well as standardise prices. 
“We must ensure that tourism remains sustainable and fair for everyone, and that all tourists continue to feel welcome and valued,” he said.
Attempts to address this led to a meeting of Thai tourism-industry players last December, which resulted in the formation of the Online Tourism Club (Thailand) in January.
PromptPay transactions number 7.5m
The number of PromptPay transactions has reached 7.5 million, valued at Bt48 billion, the Thai Bankers’ Association (TBA) reported yesterday.
These transactions were conducted by around 28.3 million individuals and 30,000 juristic persons. 
In the second half of 2017, the TBA will launch two new services. One will allow merchants to collect payments and customers to make payments via PromptPay, while the other will facilitate businesses’ payment collection processes. 
Registered PromptPay users by the end of this year are expected to number 30 million individual and business customers.
 TBA chairman Predee Daochai said the association and 21 banks, in advancing the National e-Payment Master Plan, had implemented the PromptPay service on January 27 as an online funds-transfer channel for individual customers, and extended the service to business customers on March 1. 
Service use has increased continually to an accumulated transaction value of Bt48 billion as of May 21 via 7.5 million transactions, according to Bank of Thailand data. The highest daily transaction record was approximately 100,000 items.
Predee said that since the PromptPay service was introduced in Thailand less than four months ago, its transaction volume had increased substantially to more than that found in some European countries’ similar e-payment systems after as much as two years. 
He said there had been no complaints from users thus far regarding security or errors of the PromptPay system. 

HK-based edtech start-up raises funds for expansion
Snapask, a Hong Kong-based education-technology start-up, has raised US$5 million (Bt170 million) in pre-Series A venture funding to expand its mobile education business into Southeast Asia, Australia and the United Kingdom. 
By applying artificial-intelligence techniques to its on-demand education services, Snapask has doubled its user base since the fourth quarter of 2016, reaching 300,000 users across Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. 
Snapask aims to become the first global edtech company by 2020.
Kejora Ventures, backed by the Charoen Pokphand family, Cai Wensheng, chairman of Meitu, and Welight Capital, founded by former Tencent executives, participated in this funding round. This brings total funding at Snapask to US$8 million, including seed funding from Singapore Press Holdings and Plug & Play.
The three parties represent support from China’s start-up sector, the technology sector and the Southeast Asian business sector. Their confidence in Snapask’s Southeast Asia markets stems from the combined population of 645 million and a strong demand for education support. 
Founded in 2015, Snapask is an education-technology company that applies artificial intelligence and cloud services to make education more effective, personalised, and accessible.

Fitch rates BAM senior unsecured notes
Fitch Ratings (Thailand) has assigned Bangkok Commercial Asset Management’s (BAM) upcoming senior unsecured notes of up to Bt5.6 billion a rating of “AA-(tha)”. 
The notes will be issued in tranches with maturities of up to 10 years. Proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes and refinancing. 
 The notes are rated at the same level as BAM’s national long-term rating as they represent its unsubordinated and unsecured obligations. 
 BAM’s national long-term rating is driven by sovereign support. BAM is a wholly owned subsidiary of a unit of the Bank of Thailand and has an important role in the financial system as the country’s largest distressed-asset manager. 
The “negative” outlook on BAM’s national long-term rating is due to Fitch’s expectation of lower state propensity to support the firm. It is unclear whether the central bank sees BAM as a key long-term shareholding and the shape of future state linkages remains unclear.