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CENTEL’S net profit for the second quarter this year recovered to Bt398.4 million, an increase of 23.6 per cent on the same period last year. This was attributed to positive recovery in its hotels business together with a decrease in interest expenses and corporate income tax paid. 
Suthikiati Chirathivat, chairman of the board of Central Plaza Hotel (Centel) said this positive increase was due to the overall recovery of the hotels business, especially the 5-star properties in the Maldives, together with the continued business growth for hotels located in Thailand. This was in spite of the decrease in total revenues and operating profits for the food business due to the impact of the continuing decline in domestic consumer consumption. The very positive business environment during the same period last year resulted from the then economic stimulus initiatives implemented by the government, Suthikiati said.
He added that the company was still able to continue to effectively manage its overall finance costs together with implementing some positive tax-planning measures through making use of available tax-deduction benefits relating to investments made for new assets. This was in accordance with the recent Royal Decree 604, which allows using the total amount of new investments to calculate a special expenses claim in the form of a deduction equal to 1.5 times the actual amount of investments made during the year. 
As such, this enabled the company to achieve a significant decrease in overall interest expenses as well as corporate income tax paid. This resulted in a very positive increase in achieved total consolidated net profit, before extraordinary items, in the second quarter of 2017, despite total consolidated revenues remaining more or less at a stable level compared to the same period last year.
It is expected that the positive recovery of the hotels business will continue into the second half of this year – especially in regard to the Maldives.

PROJECT HELPS COMPANIES TAKE THEIR BUSINESS ELSEWHERE

THE SECOND phase of a project to help develop the competency of Thailand’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and enter new markets is being touted as highly successful.
The SMEs Pro-active project has helped drive sales of participating businesses to over Bt5.6 billion and assisted them in penetrating new markets, said Malee Choklumlerd, director-general of the government’s International Trade Promotion Department.
Since the launch of SMEs Pro-active in 2015, sales of participating companies have increased continuously, said Malee.
The first phase of the SMEs Pro-active ran from October 2015 to September 2016, with the second phase starting last October and running to September 2018. Since the first year of the project, Thai SMEs have join more than 340 overseas trade fairs, with some expanding their sales beyond Thailand.
In total, 1,218 SMEs have been supported under the project, which has distributed Bt220 million in support capital.
The project helped drive export value of those SMEs to Bt5.6 billion, of which about Bt246.2 million is for immediate orders, with potential future sales of Bt5.35 billion. “The government will continue to support the entry of Thai SMEs into overseas markets, particularly to CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam) markets,” Malee said.