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BOI upbeat on target for total project value 
The Board of Investment (BOI) remains confident that the total value of projects applying for tax privileges would meet the target of Bt750 billion this year, of which half will be foreign direct investment, deputy secretarygeneral Narit Therdsteerasukdi.
 Narit pointed to the country’s sound infrastructure and attractive tax incentives as positive factors contributing to the target.
 The ongoing trade war between US and China has also prompted exporters of products to the two countries to relocate their production bases to Thailand, in order to skirt trade barriers. 

China aims to realise smart customs by 2025
The customs authority in China aims to enhance the innovation and application of technology and expects full achievement of smart customs by 2025.
Ni Yuefeng, head of the General Administration of Customs, said in a meeting in Beijing last week that fastemerging technology has made hightech smart customs possible.
“China customs will enhance the innovation side and the application of new technology, and we aim to implement smart customs throughout the country by 2025,” said Ni.
In recent years, China’s Customs have been working on the application of information technology including the Internet of Things, cloud computing and big data.
For example, for international trade, China’s Customs has been applying the “single window” policy, that allows foreign traders to declare cargo and taxes with a single submission on a webbased platform for free, instead of filing documents repeatedly and running between different authorities. The improvement has increased efficiency. – China Daily/ANN

Smartphones set to cover population in Vietnam
Almost all people in Vietnam will use smartphones by 2020, according to Minister of Information and Communications, Nguyen Minh Hung.
Hung said he had instructed the Vietnam Telecommunication Authority (VNTA) to build a new strategy for the industry’s development with an aim to improve Vietnam’s ranking in the world market.
He said it was time for Vietnam to have a new telecom strategy to improve its ranking. The only strategy was competitiveness. It should have solutions to encourage the big three firms – Viettel, VinaPhone and MobiFone – to create changes, thus promoting development of the mobile phone market.
The minister said telecom network providers should have longterm investments for their development.
He proposed accelerating the development of daily data packages.
The agency was required to study experiences from international organisations to have new and exact calculations on the number of internet users in Vietnam as well as ICT Development Index to have improvements for the country’s telecom market. – Viet Nam News 

Vietnamese Rubber group urged toboost revenue from wood processing
Viet Nam Rubber Group must strive to increase its annual revenue to reach US$10 billion (Bt318 billion), given its advantage of owning more than 400,000 hectares of agricultural and forestry land, Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue said at a meeting with the group last week.
Focus should be placed on diversifying products made from rubber wood, so that the group could participate in the wood processing industry which could create a new source of revenue from the export of wooden products, Hue said.
Hue said the wood processing industry and wood products manufacturing was a potential sector for the Viet Nam Rubber Group, adding that expanding production into the wood processing industry rather than in latex production would help the group reduce reliance on the fluctuations of latex prices in the global market.
Viet Nam Rubber Group must set the target of reaching revenue of $10 billion in the future, Hue asked.
He noted that the group also needed to enhance the management on its agricultural and forestry land to ensure efficiency as well as speeding up the development of a master plan for production restructuring after privatisation.
Viet Nam Rubber Group was privatised and operated as a joint stock company since June 1, 2018. The Committee for Management of State Capital was now the representative of the State capital ownership at the group after receiving it from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
In 2018, Viet Nam Rubber Group earned revenue of 4.5 trillion dongs(Bt63 billion). – Viet Nam News/ANN