Abhisit urges PM to reassure Japanese over flood measures

Abhisit urged Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who will make an official visit to Japan later this week, to try to reassure Japanese politicians and businesses about Thailand’s seriousness in preventing a recurrence of last year’s severe floods. He said the PM should have experts explain to the Japanese about Thailand’s plans.

“The Japanese want specific details. It’s the government’s duty to try to gain confidence in its water management plan,” he said. “Thai society does not want to see any big floods again.”

During his trip to Japan, the Democrat Party leader said he met with leading Japanese politicians and executives of Japanese firms such as Mitsui, Honda and Marubeni. He also gave a speech at a local reporters’ association, where he expressed his confidence that Thailand’s economy was recovering after the floods.

Many Japanese companies with investments in Thailand suffered severely as their factories were damaged by the inundation, and their global supply-chain was badly affected.

Among the companies that suffered when heavy floods brought chaos to large parts of the country was auto giant Honda, which was forced to suspended operations at one of its factories in October.

The plant in central Ayutthaya province lost more than 1,000 cars when they were submerged in muddy waters that also swamped Bangkok, an image Abhisit on Friday said became “the symbol of the industrial damage from the flooding”.

Honda said it plans to restart the Ayutthaya plant by the end of March and expects to have operations back to normal in early April.

Democrat spokesman Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, who accompanied Abhisit on the Japan visit, yesterday said time was running out for the government to restore confidence in Thailand following last year’s flood crisis.

He said many Japanese businesspeople the Democrats met expressed their concern at the lack of clarity in the Thai government’s flood-prevention plans.

In Tokyo, former premier Abhisit said he expected Thailand’s economy to rebound in the first quarter of this year as firms will increase their output following last year’s devastating floods. Abhisit made his comments during a meeting with industry leaders as part of a drive to reassure businesses thinking of fleeing the country following the disaster, Agence France-Presse reported. “I would say that the majority of companies have already resumed operations, many of them at the pre-crisis level,” Abhisit told journalists in Tokyo.

“Yesterday, at my meeting with Honda, they confirmed that by the end of this month they will be back in operation. So we expect quite a strong rebound in the first quarter of this year.”

Thailand suffered a double-digit contraction in the final three months of 2011, the sharpest on record, as the worst floods in half a century pummelled the nation’s industrial sector.

The months-long floods took a heavy toll on Thailand’s industrial heartland north of Bangkok, with many factories forced to close temporarily.

A recent survey showed that almost one in 10 Japanese manufacturers with operations in Thailand now plans to relocate out of the Kingdom.

Electronics companies were particularly hard hit, with more than half directly affected by the disaster, according to the poll of 1,345 companies by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce Bangkok (JCCB).

The JCCB has urged the Thai government to speed up implementation of a flood-control plan.