Source: The Nation

The economic ministers yesterday approved Bt16.8 billion to help tourism operators affected by the recent political turmoil, Tourism and Sports Minister Chumpol Silapaarcha said yesterday. The amount will be proposed for Cabinet approval today.

Meanwhile, Thai Airways International (THAI) may post a second quarter net loss of Bt5.4 billion, with passenger numbers plunging in the wake of the political turmoil, president Piyasvasti Amranand told leaders of more than 700 airlines at the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting in Berlin yesterday.

However, he assured the audience that the political crisis was now over. THAI will also push forward the sale of 1billion shares this year.

The Tourism and Sports Ministry on Monday proposed the economic ministers meet to formulate an urgent financial package worth Bt21.2 billion to help operators suffering from the Red-shirt chaos of April and May. However, that amount was sliced to Bt10 billion.

Chumpol said Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva reasoned the amount could be cut back because the government had placed priority on assisting small and mediumsized enterprises before moving to large operators in the second phrase.

Affected operators may request loans from the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand (SME Bank) at interest of 23 per cent for a maximum eight years. Payments on the principal will be waived for the first two years. The maximum loan amount will be Bt5 million.

The ministers also earmarked Bt1.5 billion for the Government Savings Bank to assist riot-affected individuals. They also approved Bt360 million for the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to restore domestic tourism within the next three or four months. The TAT earlier said it needed Bt1.6 billion to rebuild tourism over a few months.

And the ministers granted Bt5 billion to help general operators suffering from political unrest stretching back to the Bangkok airport closures in late 2008.

Last year, the government allocated Bt5 billion to help operators, but many companies have still not received that assistance, due to complicated regulations, procedures and paperwork. Moreover, the ministers also reduced the tax deduction ceiling from a proposed Bt15,000 to Bt12,000.

Federation of Thai Tourism Association spokesman Charoen Wangananont said the funds approved should help operators to run their business for a few months.

However, he believes the industry will not return to normal in less than three months and hopes the government will approve more money later. He said big operators might be in a difficult situation for the short term, due to receiving no immediate assistance measures from the government.

The tourism industry is experiencing great difficulties this year, losing an estimated Bt100 billion from the recent Red shirt demonstration and violence.

Source: CNN

The Thai government launches travel incentives in a bid to win back the world’s travelers as government advisories are reduced

Several signs have emerged this week that the world’s confidence in Bangkok is slowly returning following last month’s violence.

On the front page of today’s Hong Kong Standard is the headline “Bangkok’s Back.”  The Standard reports that there are some great deals for Hong Kong residents looking for cheap trips to Thailand now that the government has lowered its travel advisory against Thailand from the top warning level, black, down to red.

This is good news for the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), which says the country needs to focus on domestic and regional travelers from the Middle East and Asia right now given it’s the middle of the low season. In a statement released this week, the TAT says it will work with the private sector to offer special promotions for travelers.

“The proposed tourism recovery packages have to be carefully planned to ensure the most effective returns on investment, especially in view of the fact that Thai tourism is now in the low season,” says the TAT.

The Thailand chapter of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) says it wants the world’s travel industry to throw their support behind the Tourism Authority’s inclusive ‘welcome back’ campaign, which is currently being created based on constructive ‘all for one, one for all’ principles, but notes that  cheap deals aren’t a quick fix.

“The problem is not price,” said PATA in a statement released to the media. “The problem is how to show travel buyers and consumers that Thailand is safe, stable and more welcoming than ever. We need a unified, consistent response, not knee-jerk price cutting.”

In terms of travel advisories, many countries have revised their warnings this week. Canada has lifted its warning against non-essential travel to Thailand, but urges its residents to “exercise a high degree of caution.” The United Kingdom too has replaced its previous advice, which advised against all but essential travel to Bangkok and Chiang Mai, now advising travelers to exercise caution if heading there.

The United States recently downgraded the warning advising American citizens to avoid all travel to Bangkok, though it still advises against non-essential travel to Thailand at this time.

In a related development, Abhisit Vejjajiva Popularity Soars in Thailand: Thailand Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is fast becoming the most popular PM in Thailand’s history, this week he received the highest confidence vote of any cabinet minister in a survey of people in 30 provinces, Bangkok Poll of Bangkok University.

The Bangkok Poll said it surveyed people around the nation on “How People Feel about the Recent Censure Debate” after the no-confidence debate against the prime minister and other five ministers was over. It did not say how many people were involved.

The people were also asked to cast a vote in favour or against the grilled ministers.

Mr Abhisit received the highest confidence vote (71.7 per cent), followed by Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij (71.0%), Transport Minister Sohpon Zarum (54.4%), Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya (53.6%), Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban (52.8%) and Interior Minister Chavarat Charnvirakul (50.0%).

According to the poll, 43.5 per cent of the respondents wanted the Democrat-led government to continue running the country, while 28.4 per cent of them preferred a House dissolution, 17.6 per cent favoured a cabinet reshuffle, 3.8 per cent wanted the premier to step down and only 1.4 per cent wanted the Red Shirt opposition camp to become a government, the most resounding slap in the face to Thaksin Shinawatra yet.

A number of media commentaries have predicted eruptions of social unrest in Europe, some with revolutionary connotations, as a direct result of the economic crisis. Thailand has just suffered the consequences of these struggles also, but local observers have condemned mainstream media for “biased reporting” on Thailand’s turbulent few weeks.

Recently The Nation, an English-based newspaper in Thailand, published an “Open letter to CNN” by Napas Na Pombejra, which set out to reprimand CNN correspondents Dan Rivers and Sarah Snider, citing that “thousands of CNN’s viewers have already begun to question the accuracy and dependability of its reporting.”

The same could be said for the BBC and other news agencies. For those of us living in Thailand it does appear they have resorted to “biased reporting”. Pombejra’s letter reminded CNN’s journalists, reporters, and researchers that they “have a collective responsibility to follow the journalist’s code and ethics to deliver and present facts from all facets of the story, not merely one-sided, shallow and sensational half-truths.”

What the writer was concerned about was this: “Statements seem to have been solely taken from the anti-government protest leaders or their sympathisers,” and complained that “details about the government’s position have come from secondary resources…No direct interviews with government officials have been shown; no interviews or witness statements from Bangkok residents or civilians unaffiliated with the protesters, particularly those who have been harassed by or suffered at the hands of the protesters, have been circulated.”

The main thrust of the piece noted that: “Rivers and Snider’s choice of sensational vocabulary and terminology in every newscast, and choice of images to broadcast, has resulted in law-abiding soldiers and the heavily-pressured Thai government being painted in a negative, harsh and oppressive light…”

The Economist, while not exactly favourable in this country for its own slant on Thailand’s problems pointed out that: “[Thailand] is also counting the economic cost of the worst political violence in decades. GDP grew by 12% in the first quarter as exports rebounded. Now growth faces threats on three fronts: the uncertainty roiling the global economy; a slump in domestic demand; and the damage television pictures of Bangkok as a war-zone have done to Thailand’s important tourism industry. With the economy stuttering, the social and class divisions that emerged during the confrontation will be even harder to heal.”

Maybe, but Thailand’s prime minister Abhisit, at the end of an “acrimonious two-day censure debate” made a desperate call for reconciliation. But his course of treatment included bringing ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to justice. The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) is to circulate copies of his arrest warrant on terrorism charges, with copies distributed to 187 Interpol member countries asking them to help capture him.

The Economist’s take, that Kasit Piromya, Thailand’s foreign minister, has complained that other countries are not helping Thailand to catch a “bloody terrorist”, despite a 2008 court conviction for corruption. It notes that Interpol reveals that he is still not on its fugitive list.

Reuters reports that: “Calm has returned since troops forcibly dislodged protesters demanding immediate elections from their fortified encampment in ritzy central Bangkok on May 19, providing a window of opportunity to dip back into what had been one of Asia’s hottest emerging markets,” but that “Thailand remains fundamentally divided between what some analysts see as a peasant and proletariat movement largely backing ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and what they call an aristocratic “establishment elite” of royalists, military brass, bureaucrats and the educated middle class.”

In recent times, a number of media commentaries have predicted similar eruptions of social unrest, almost in revolutionary dimensions, as a direct result of the economic crisis, with warnings that Europe will suffer the return of nationalist tensions and the emergence of fascist movements.

This was backed up by historian Simon Schama of the Financial Times, who stated last month: “Far be it for me to make a dicey situation dicier but you can’t smell the sulphur in the air right now and not think we might be on the threshold of an age of rage…in Europe and America there is a distinct possibility of a long hot summer of social umbrage.”

So Thailand’s unique brand of unrest is not isolated in the world’s social pathology of today. And Ko Chang, an island a million miles away from “sulphur in the air”, is still as much an attraction for tourists as it always was.