Thailand Speeds Up Cross-Border Transport Network

BANGKOK, Feb 16 (TNA) -The Thai government is speeding up mega-projects for further national development, focusing now on expanding its transport networks to neighbouring countries, including high-speed railways. Virabongsa Ramakura, head of the government’s Strategic Committee for Rehabilitation and Future Development, told a seminar on the development of Thailand in Bangkok on Thursday that the government needs to expedite implementing the mega-projects for national development, referring to a plan, as an example, on extending local roads across the border to the Dawei deep-sea port and Da Nang in Myanmar and Vietnam to facilitate cargo transportation and another high-speed railway plan from Bangkok to Nong Khai Province in the Thai Northeast to connect to Laos and China. Virabongsa urged the Ministry of Transport to accelerate a high-speed railway project from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in the Thai North and to explore more routes as well, saying that his panel will be studying railway track systems and railway operations, new investment initiatives which should welcome local and overseas operators, and that his panel will also push ahead with flood prevention plans, covering the development of floodways and water retention areas, and improvements of sluice gates. According to Virabongsa, who is a former Thai deputy premier and a former finance minister, a 2.2 trillion-baht state budget is needed to sponsor the country's investment in the new mega-projects over the next decade. Kanit Sangsubhan (คณิศ แสงสุพรรณ), chief of Thailand's Fiscal Policy Research Institute Foundation, said, meanwhile, that the Thai economy grew by 3.5 per cent annually on average over the past seven years and investment expanded by 3.2 per cent yearly. Kanit acknowledged although the number of the poor in Thailand had dropped from 22 million in 1988 to 5.4 million in 2007, there apparently remain problems with income distribution in the country, where the poorest 20 per cent of the total population have remained 12 times as much as the richest 20 per cent of the total population over the past two decades, suggesting that the government promote more private investment as a major drive of the national economic growth and development in the coming years.(TNA)