Thailand participates in Boao Forum 2012 in China

BOAO, Hainan, April 2 (TNA) - Thailand participates in the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2012, being held in Boao, a scenic town in China’s southern Hainan Province, from April 2-3. On behalf of Thailand, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Kittirat Na-Ranong and Charoen Pokphand (CP Group) Chairman Dhanin Chearavanont attended the two-day regional forum, in which more than 2,000 government, business and academic leaders throughout the world also take part. Delivering a keynote speech at the opening session of the forum, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang called on Asian countries to jointly cooperate more on further developing and strengthening the regional economy on a sustainable basis, saying that combined trade value of Asian countries now stands around 30 per cent of the world's total. Li also called for stronger cooperation among Asian nations, half of them are developing countries, to jointly deal with several regional problems, including unemployment, food and energy shortages, acknowledging that, if materialised, the stronger regional cooperation will help push the developing countries to develop together and to make the region more recognisable. Li stressed on China’s new model on developing its economy, concentrating on economic strength domestically through generating more income for local people to enable them to gain higher purchasing power and to enlarge the Chinese market. Dhanin, meanwhile, said that the Asian economy has been growing sharply while problems have persisted; so, Asian countries have to prepare themselves for such the problems, including impacts from debt woes, in Europe or the United States. Dhanin insisted that Thailand can develop along with other Asian countries if there is no political problem in the country and the Thai government has transparent economic development measures, urging China, with its total population of over 1.3 billion, to import more Thai agricultural and food products. The CP group chair also suggested that Thai farmers find ways to produce higher volumes of their produce and to fix higher prices to earn more income to eventually boost and strengthen the Thai economy in the long run. (TNA)