Thai politics and FBA shake foreign investor confidence

The cloudy climate of the country's politics and the uncertainty of the Foreign Business Act (FBA) have dented the confidence of foreign investors - including Australians.

Australia-Thai Chamber of Commerce president Gary Woollacott said the FBA has affected Australia investments in Thailand as well as investments from many other countries.

"There has been no change in the status of the FBA bill. If it stays as it is until the new government comes in, then we'll see foreign investment start to return," he said. "If it is changed under the current government, then I don't know what will happen."

He said foreign investors would like to see relaxation and liberalisation, not a further tightening process from the government.

Australian investments in the Kingdom in the first nine months were Bt944 million, down from Bt1.432 billion in the same period last year, according to the Board of Investment's records.
However, Woollacott said Australian companies have continued to invest in Thailand over the past two years, particularly in the automotive and auto-component industries in the Eastern Seaboard.

If Thai politics and the investment environment are stable, he insisted that Australian investors were interested in Thailand and had strong feelings that it is a good place to do business due to cheap labour.

Thanks to the Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) of 2005, he said the two countries had recorded double trade value every year. Australian exports of goods and services to Thailand have grown from 3.7 billion Australian dollars (Bt115.6 billion) in 2004 to almost A$5 billion last year, due mainly to tariff reduction for minerals, pharmaceuticals and auto-parts.

Thailand's exports to Australia have risen from $4.6 billion in 2004 to $7.5 billion in 2006. One major success were motor vehicle exports, which doubled to $2 billion in the first two years of TAFTA. Other products that benefit from the agreement include electronic goods and cosmetics.

Meanwhile, Woollacott said the chamber had co-operated with the Australia Thailand Business Council, the Australian Trade Commission and the Thai Chamber of Commerce to organise a conference called "Asian Growth: The Next Steps 2007" from November 7-8 at the InterContinental Hotel.

"Participants will learn how to adjust their business here and the outlook in other countries in Asia," he said.

The conference will cover all key topics for operators and investors, for example, "Overview of Local and International Business Climate", "Impact of Free Trade Agreements Around the Region", and "Environment -Asia's Inconvenient Truth".

Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukukul
The Nation-->

Invention Of the Year: The iPhone

By LEV GROSSMAN , Time.com (4 Nov 2007)

Stop. I mean, don't stop reading this, but stop thinking what you're about to think. Or, O.K., I'll think it for you:

The thing is hard to type on. It's too slow. It's too big. It doesn't have instant messaging. It's too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it's too cheap!) It doesn't support my work e-mail. It's locked to AT&T. Steve Jobs secretly hates puppies. And—all together now—we're sick of hearing about it! Yes, there's been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple's iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:

1. The iPhone is prettyMost high-tech companies don't take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs' basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won't do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into "airplane" mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.

2. It's touchy-feelyapple didn't invent the touchscreen. Apple didn't even reinvent it (Apple probably acquired its much hyped multitouch technology when it snapped up a company called Fingerworks in 2005). But Apple knew what to do with it. Apple's engineers used the touchscreen to innovate past the graphical user interface (which Apple helped pioneer with the Macintosh in the 1980s) to create a whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.

This is, as engineers say, nontrivial. It's part of a new way of relating to computers. Look at the success of the Nintendo Wii. Look at Microsoft's new Surface Computing division. Look at how Apple has propagated its touchscreen interface to the iPod line with the iPod Touch. Can it be long before we get an iMac Touch? A TouchBook? Touching is the new seeing.

3. It will make other phones betterjobs didn't write the code inside the iPhone. These days he doesn't dirty his fingers with 1's and 0's, if he ever really did. But he did negotiate the deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone. That's important: one reason so many cell phones are lame is that cell-phone-service providers hobble developers with lame rules about what they can and can't do. AT&T gave Apple unprecedented freedom to build the iPhone to its own specifications. Now other phone makers are jealous. They're demanding the same freedoms. That means better, more innovative phones for all.

4. It's not a phone, it's a platformwhen apple made the iphone, it didn't throw together some cheap-o bare-bones firmware. It took OS X, its full-featured desktop operating system, and somehow squished it down to fit inside the iPhone's elegant glass-and-stainless-steel case. That makes the iPhone more than just a gadget. It's a genuine handheld, walk-around computer, the first device that really deserves the name. One of the big trends of 2007 was the idea that computing doesn't belong just in cyberspace, it needs to happen here, in the real world, where actual stuff happens. The iPhone gets applications like Google Maps out onto the street, where we really need them.

And this is just the beginning. Platforms are for building on. Last month, after a lot of throat-clearing, Apple decided to open up the iPhone, so that you—meaning people other than Apple employees—will be able to develop software for it too. Ever notice all that black blank space on the iPhone's desktop? It's about to fill up with lots of tiny, pretty, useful icons.

5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to comethe iphone has sold enough units—more than 1.4 million at press time—that it'll be around for a while, and with all that room to develop and its infinitely updatable, all-software interface, the iPhone is built to evolve. Look at the iPod of six years ago. That monochrome interface! That clunky touchwheel! It looks like something a caveman whittled from a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that's going to make the iPhone look that primitive. You'll have one in a few years. It'll be very cool. And it'll be even cheaper.