Thai PM meets Hong Kong’s chief executive, business leaders

HONG KONG, February 26 (TNA) - Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who is visiting Hong Kong from February 25-26, met Hong Kong's Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and business leaders on Tuesday morning, during which she invited them to expand their investment projects into Thailand. Yingluck first had a working breakfast with Hong Kong's 10 leading business operators, including those from the financial and banking sectors, at the Island Shangri-La Hotel, where she stays, during which she informed them of Thailand's more stable economy at the moment, in the wake of a flooding crisis in late 2011. Yingluck said the Thai economy grew by 6.4 per cent on average last year and it should further expand by 5-6 per cent this year, presenting them, thus, more investment opportunities in Thailand regarding her government’s new mega-infrastructure development projects to keep stimulating the national economy and to enhance the national competitiveness, especially through the infrastructure development, the zoning of domestic farmlands and the promotion of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and local products. According to the Thai premier, her government has 2.2-trillion-baht new infrastructure projects to improve domestic transport and logistics systems, foreseen to also help boost national competitiveness because of lower costs subsequently, as well as to help distribute prosperity and improve connectivity with neighboring economies in the region, namely Hong Kong, where there are a large international airport and a big deep-sea port and there is a major transport center handling relatively huge amounts of cargoes in the world. The prime minister also mentioned her administration's new water management projects, totally worth about 350 billion baht. The Thai prime minister then went to Hong Kong's Government House to meet the Hong Kong Chief Executive, who has taken office since last year, during which she insisted on the continual development of relations between Thailand and Hong Kong, beginning in the term of former Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang, and expressed her interest in further boosting bilateral trade and investment cooperation. The Thai premier then witnessed the signing of an agreement on trade and investment cooperation between Thai and Hong Kong commerce ministers. The Thai prime minister and her entourage are scheduled to return to Thailand Tuesday night, at about 9pm. (TNA)