SINGAPORE: A National Environment Agency (NEA) executive officer was charged in court on Wednesday (Aug 16) for corruption. The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) said in a news release on Tuesday that Singaporean Ruzdiman Salhan, 42, allegedly obtained and attempted to receive bribes in the form of loans amounting toContinue Reading
PUBLISHED : 18 Aug 2023 at 09:10
City Hall has ordered the suspension of work on an overpass at Bang Kapi intersection after a 10-metre-long sheet of metal crashed to the ground as it was being lifted by a crane, killing one worker and injuring two others.
Siam Ruam Jai Rescue Foundation (Pu In) was notified about the accident at 1.50am on Thursday.
Rescue worker Chaiwat Boonprasom said workers were removing the metal sheets which support the overpass deck when the accident happened.
Several workers were tying wire cables to the edges of the metal sheet so it could be lifted off the overpass by a crane when the unsecured ends suddenly crashed onto Seri Thai Road.
Pol Col Thanapan Padungkarn, superintendent of Lat Phrao Police Station, said investigators have summoned the construction site engineer for questioning. The engineer said he had no idea what caused the accident, as he wasn’t at the site when it happened, he said.
Police will summon more witnesses for questioning to determine if negligence played a part in the accident, said Pol Col Thanapan.
Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) spokesman Aekvarunyoo Amarapala said the BMA has temporarily suspended work on the site until safety can be assured. The BMA has also launched a probe into the accident, he said.
After the incident, Suchatchavee Suwansawas, head of the Democrat Party’s policy committee and former president of the Thailand Council of Engineers, reposted a video of the overpass he had posted in April.
“I said in April that the flyover construction did not meet safety standards. Now someone has died because of it. This is a major issue in Thai society,” he wrote.
PUBLISHED : 18 Aug 2023 at 09:00
A group of Buddhist artists is urging a hotel in Bangkok to remove a controversial sculpture from its premises, saying its unsightly appearance disturbs passers-by.
The group, which calls itself the “Council of Artists Promoting Buddhism”, is planning to gather at the Bazaar Hotel on Ratchadaphisek Road on Friday to urge the hotel’s management to remove the statue of Khru Kai Kaeo from its site, which they claim promotes “devil worship”.
The council, which is accredited by the Religious Affairs Department, said it was highly inappropriate for the hotel to install the 4-metre-tall gargoyle-like sculpture on its grounds.
Khru Kai Kaeo, also known as Khru Ba Kai Kaeo, is said to be the revered mentor teacher of Jayavarman VII, a former king of the Khmer Empire. However, some historians have said they have never heard of this so-called deity before.
Citing a large number of complaints received by the council against the scary-looking sculpture, the council said it has to take action against the statue on behalf of the public.
As the sculpture is clearly visible from the busy Ratchadaphisek Road, its unusual appearance might frighten passers-by and commuters, said the group.
National Thai People Council (NTPC), another civic group, yesterday petitioned Bangkok governor Chadchart Sittipunt to relocate the sculpture to a less conspicuous site, saying it “poses a threat to Thai culture and beliefs”.
Phonphakhun Setthayabodi, a representative of the NTPC, said it was highly inappropriate for the hotel to install an evil-looking sculpture for people to worship as if it were a Buddha image.
It is tantamount to supporting a devil-worshipping cult, he said.
The Khru Kai Kaeo sculpture made headlines when it was taken on the back of a truck from a studio in Ratchaburi to the Huai Khwang shrine on the morning of Aug 9.
The truck was stuck at a pedestrian bridge, paralysing traffic on Ratchadaphisek Road for about two hours.
The sculpture’s unusual appearance sparked debate about what it represented.
It was reported some worshippers sought to buy cats, dogs and rabbits to sacrifice for the deity.
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ReutersProperty giant Evergrande has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US as the real estate crisis in China deepens.
The move comes as problems in China’s property market are adding to concerns about the world’s second largest economy.
China’s economic growth has slowed, exports have fallen and youth unemployment has hit a record high.
Last week, official figures showed the country had slipped into deflation for the first time in more than two years.
China Evergrande Group made the Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection filing in a New York court on Thursday.
Chapter 15 protects the US assets of a foreign company while it works on restructuring its debts.
Evergrande, which defaulted on its debt repayments in 2021, has been working to renegotiate its agreements with creditors.
With an estimated $300bn of debts, it was the world’s most heavily indebted property developer.
At the time, concerns that the firm was on the brink of collapse sent shockwaves through global financial markets.
The company’s Hong Kong-listed shares have been suspended from trading since March 2022.
Evergrande revealed last month that it lost a combined 581.9bn yuan ($80bn; £62.7bn) over the last two years.
Last week, another Chinese property giant, Country Garden, warned that it could see a loss of up to $7.6bn for the first six months of the year.
Earlier this month, Beijing said that China’s economy had slipped into deflation as consumer prices declined in July for the first time in more than two years.
Weak growth means China is not facing the rising prices that have rattled many other countries and prompted central bankers elsewhere to sharply increase borrowing costs.
The country’s imports and exports also fell sharply last month as weaker global demand threatened the recovery prospects of the world’s second-largest economy.
Official figures showed exports fell by 14.5% in July compared with a year earlier, while imports dropped 12.4%.
Earlier this week, China’s central bank unexpectedly cut key interest rates for the second time in three months, in a bid to boost the economy.
KLANG, Malaysia: “Adik sayang mama” or I love you mama in Malay were Shahrul Kamal Roslan’s last words to his mother Mahanum Ismail before the pilot was killed in an air crash on Thursday (Aug 17) on the Guthrie Highway near the Elmina township in Shah Alam, Selangor. According to the flight manifest releasedContinue Reading
‘Platform’ to help manage food waste
PUBLISHED : 18 Aug 2023 at 07:43
PHUKET: The island province aims to achieve the status of a low-carbon destination to promote eco-tourism.
Phuket governor Narong Woonciew said on Thursday the province has held discussions with state agencies and a sustainable development foundation, where they focused on managing food waste, which creates a negative impact on the environment.
Relevant agencies agreed to produce a coordinated and systematic food waste management plan. The state agencies, as well as private and civil society sectors, must integrate their efforts for maximum sustainability, Mr Narong said.
Wattanapong Suksai, director of the Phuket Provincial Natural Resources and Environment Office, said the office has been supported by an environmental fund to lower greenhouse gas emissions and execute action plans to cope with climate change.
A working team chaired by the local government has also been formed to carry out the task on the ground.
Phuket is working with five sectors — energy, transport, waste management, agriculture, forestry and industry — to proceed with curbing greenhouse gasses.
Citing data from 2019, Phuket emitted 3.1 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide. The rate has been forecast to rise to around 4.6 million tonnes by 2030.
However, successfully cutting back carbon emissions would lower Phuket’s greenhouse gas output to 440,000 tonnes per year by 2030, Mr Wattanapong said.
According to the Environmental and Pollution Control Office 15, the problem has to do with Phuket’s inability to sort rubbish, 50% of which is food waste. Such separation would be a cost-effective and climate-friendly way of disposing of the garbage.
To deal with food waste, the Phuket Provincial Administrative Organisation will work more closely with Phuket municipality. The PAO runs a composting facility and is looking to establish a knowledge centre for local residents to handle their garbage using the correct methods.
A platform will be developed for residents and businesses, which will enable them to learn how much excess food is discarded by hotels, retail shops or department stores and how it can otherwise be donated to vulnerable groups. It will also help to calculate the amounts of food waste, which is useful for mapping out effective disposal plans.
The office is expected to seek a budget to promote Phuket as a role model province in dealing with food waste in a bid to achieve the status of a low-carbon destination, Mr Wattanapong said.
Thiwat Seedokbuab, vice chair of the Phuket PAO, said it is operating a composting facility in tambon Rassada and welcomes residents’ cooperation in managing food waste and spreading the word about it.
The PAO is in the middle of drafting the terms of reference to procure electric buses, he added.
Comparing the shakeout of China’s property sector to America’s Great Financial Crisis of 2008 has become a popular meme in the commentariat. Stock markets don’t see it that way: During the 10 months from November through August in 2008, US financial stocks lost half their market value, while Chinese financial stocks have gained 20 percent.
The chart below compares the S&P’s Financials sub-index in the leadup to the GFC (October 31, 2007, through August 15, 2008) to the performance of the financials sub-index of the Shenzhen 300 Index during the same months of 2022-2023.
There is no systemic crisis in China, which has no subprime market, no 5% down mortgages and no “liar’s loans” – the toxic ingredients of America’s toxic 2008 crisis.
China has a different sort of problem: The migration of nearly 700 million Chinese from countryside to city produced history’s greatest land boom, and allowed local governments to fund themselves and their friends with land sales. Real estate ballooned to a quarter of China’s GDP, and lazy capital flowed into the property market.
China’s marginal efficiency of capital (GDP growth per unit of gross fixed capital formation) fell from 0.3% in the 1990s to only .15% in 2020. That’s what Beijing is determined to change.
Xi Jinping’s government in Beijing began tightening lending standards for the property market in 2020, pushing property developers into distress by the middle of 2022. China’s top developers, Evergrande and Country Gardens, have failed to make bond payments. Some trust products – high-interest paper issued by financial institutions with backing by IOUs from property developers and others – have defaulted.
Policy analysts with access to the State Council told Asia Times in Beijing last week that the property market crisis is political.
“Common prosperity” and “Houses are for living, not for speculation” are the populist slogans that the government has put forward, but the underlying issue is simpler: Xi Jinping wants to centralize government finances and impose fiscal discipline on local governments that have lived off the windfall of land prices for the past thirty years.
The central government could push a button and stop the bleeding in the property market whenever it wants. But it won’t let a good crisis go to waste, in Rahm Emmanuel’s phrase.
The State Council is determined to steer China toward a high-tech economy with high rates of return on capital and strong productivity growth, and it will keep the squeeze on the lazy capital of the property market until its political redoubts have been reduced.
To put China’s financial problems in context: There are between RMB 35 trillion and 70 trillion in off-the-books government financing through local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) and other instruments, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Assume an RMB 50 trillion float and an extreme 20% default rate, or RMB 10 trillion of nonpaying bonds. At the current yield of quasi-governmental bonds, that’s RMB 250 billion in skipped coupon payments, or about 1% of China’s central government revenues in 2022.
In an extreme hypothetical case of mass local government defaults, the cost of transferring the cost of debt service to the central government would be trivial compared with overall government revenues.
State-owned enterprises belonging to local governments have estimated assets of about RMB 210 trillion, which can be sold over time to pay down debt. Even assuming a significant drop in property prices, SOE assets more than cover local government debt.
Compare this with the 2008 crisis in the United States, where the market value of about $2 trillion in securitized mortgages and home equity loans fell by more than half, leaving the banks insolvent on a mark-to-market basis.
Regulatory forbearance (ignoring the mark-to-market losses) allowed the banks to work their way out of the hole. Most of the securitized paper continued to pay coupons, and allowed banks to continue to pay interest on the liabilities that funded them.
Mortgage balances in China amount to less than 40% of the value of the financed property, according to the International Monetary Fund. Compare this with the United States in 2008, where the average loan-to-value ratio for conventional single-family mortgages was close to 80%, and nearly 30% of newly-issued mortgages had loan-to-value ratios of more than 90%.
US banks issued 5% down mortgages, zero-interest mortgages, and other highly-levered forms of financing that left homeowners without a cushion when the housing market imploded.
Despite these enormous differences, US think tanks draw parallels to the 2008 crisis. A recent Council on Foreign Relations report states:
A PBoC survey of urban households conducted in 2019 revealed that the value of housing composed 59 percent of households’ total assets, while mortgage loans stood at 12 percent of total assets. These figures are similar to the United States in 2008 on the eve of the subprime mortgage crisis.
That’s true, but misleading: China has no subprime market. It has a small fraction of mortgages issued with a 20% down payment, and an average equity cushion of about 60%.
On Aug. 16, the LGFV market passed a critical test when Tianjin Infrastructure Construction Group sold a RMB 1.5 billion 4.5% six-month note with bids 70 times the offering volume. Bloomberg called this “a sign that Beijing’s fresh efforts to defuse debt risks among regional authorities are reviving demand for such securities.”
Tianjin is the site of China’s first fully-automated port, a marvel of AI applications, and may be a special case, but the takeaway is that the LGFV market remains in full function.
The financial war of attrition between local governments and Beijing will depress China’s GDP growth in the short term, and keep private capital investment subdued for the time being. In an August 14 note to clients, JP Morgan analyst Katherine Lei wrote:
Our base case assumption is that real estate investment will decline by 7.5% in 2023 (vs -10% in 2022) and GDP growth will be 5.0% in 2023. However, the implications of the default events by Country Garden and trusts may be higher than suggested by all the headline estimates.
Some Wall Street analysts recommend taking profits on Chinese bank stocks, worrying that the big state-owned banks might be asked to step in and bail out developers, local government paper or trust products.
That would imply reduced bank profits, but by no means systemic problems for the banks. The volume of interest payments at risk is small relative to the cash flow of the Chinese government.
PUBLISHED : 18 Aug 2023 at 06:41
The Social Development and Human Security Ministry has vowed to protect welfare benefits for the elderly following the introduction of a new regulation that has restricted access for many ageing citizens.
The new regulation was signed by Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda and published in the Royal Gazette on Friday and became effective on Saturday.
Under the new regulation, only elderly people with no income or insufficient income to cover the cost of living are entitled to a monthly allowance from the state.
However, a provisional clause in the new regulation states that the new criterion for payment of the elderly allowance does not apply to people who registered for the allowance with local bodies before Aug 12, 2023, meaning those currently receiving the allowance are not affected.
The old regulation was for local administration organisations to pay universal monthly allowances of 600-1,000 baht to all elderly people, with 600 baht for people aged 60-69, 700 baht for people aged 70-79, 800 baht for people aged 80-89, and 1,000 baht for people aged 90 years and older.
About 100 group members advocating for welfare benefits gathered outside the ministry on Thursday to demand that the old universal payment system be restored. Critics said the new rules restrict seniors’ access to universal welfare payments.
The ministry’s permanent secretary, Anukul Peedkaew, said the National Committee for the Elderly needs to draw up further criteria for who will receive welfare benefits for the elderly.
He told the group that the ministry has stood by the elderly and will protect their benefits. He insisted the elderly, who currently receive a monthly allowance, will not be affected and that a new national committee on the elderly set up by a new government will work out the details of the requirements for payments.
He went on to say that currently, about 11 million people aged 60 and over receive monthly allowances, which require a budget of 87 billion baht each year.
Next year will see more than 14 million seniors receiving the allowances, which will require a budget of 110 billion baht, he said.
PUBLISHED : 18 Aug 2023 at 05:50
SAMUT PRAKAN: The Customs Department on Thursday officially launched the Thai Customs Canine Training Centre (TCCTC) — Thailand’s first sniffer dog training facility — in Bang Phli district.
At least five sniffer dogs are expected to be recruited by the centre for training in detecting narcotics hidden in imported and exported goods.
The TCCTC’s opening ceremony was presided over by department director-general, Patchara Anuntasilpa; director-general of South Korea’s Customs Human Resource Development Institute, Yoo Sunhee; and representatives from related agencies. The centre is located on 2 rai of land in tambon Nong Prue, featuring an office building, a one-storey training building and an outdoor training ground for the dogs.
According to Mr Patchara, the one-storey building houses training equipment and a simulated working environment with luggage and a conveyor belt to help dogs prepare for the real task.
He added that the dogs in training will be cared for by a team of veterinarians from the Suwanchard Pet Hospital.
Before setting up the Samut Prakan centre, the department consulted countries that deploy sniffer dogs in their customs work and have formal dog training centres, including the United States, Japan, South Korea and Australia, he said.
Regarding South Korea’s Customs Department, Mr Patchara said that the country offered two labrador retrievers to the Thai department upon learning it was setting up the TCCTC. It also helped train two Thai customs officers on how to work with sniffer dogs for 12 weeks, he said. The labrador retrievers, named Khanun (Jackfruit) and Durian, arrived in Thailand with their trainers on July 23.
Lawyers approached by CNA noted that there are restrictions on displaying national emblems, communist symbols and advertisements – but not specifically on pride flags.
Flags with illegal material are obviously restricted as well, including those that contain incitement to violence, obscene material or those that promote enmity between different groups on the grounds of race.
People are also not allowed to display the flags of other countries in public, in accordance with the National Emblems (Control of Display) Act.
The definition of “foreign national emblem” under the Act also covers “the flag, banner or other emblem of any political organisation claiming to be a national movement in any state”, as well as “any likeness or resemblance however reproduced of any national leader or former national leader of any state or the leader or former leader of any such political organisation”, said Mr Ng Yuan Siang from Eugene Thuraisingam LLP.
From this, the Act does not cover pride flags and appears to be mainly concerned with emblems related to foreign national movements, Mr Ng added.
However, Mr Cory Wong from Invictus Law Corporation gave a differing opinion that the pride flag could be covered under the Act.
“There are numerous political organisations championing the pride movement in various countries worldwide, and it may not matter which specific political organisation is being singled out exactly,” he noted.
Mr Ng said the location in which a flag has been placed “may also be material”.
He added that for example, displaying a flag may breach a condominium’s by-laws, which are stipulations residents need to abide by and that vary from condo to condo.
Separately, in 2021, the police said they were investigating a teenager who allegedly removed a pride flag hung outside a woman’s ground-floor HDB flat along Hougang Street 52 on two occasions.
At the time, AsiaOne reported that the police showed up at her home after receiving a complaint about the flag.
The police said they had acted according to procedure by responding to the unit to assess the nature of the flag, the purpose of its display and whether the flag displayed any national emblems.
A police officer then advised her that she could consider removing the flag, considering that it was displayed in a prominent manner and prone to acts of mischief since it was on the ground floor.
Aside from this, the lawyers pointed out other restrictions for flags of social or political movements which are unrelated to foreign national movements.
For example, the Internal Security (Prohibition of Emblems) Order restricts the display of a communist logo in a manner that is intended or likely to be used in a manner prejudicial to the interests of Singapore, or is against peace, welfare or good order in Singapore, said Ms Carol Yuen from Remy Choo Chambers.
Mr Ng pointed out that specifically, these statutes prohibit the manufacture, sale, use, display or possession of any emblem or device in the form of a five-pointed red star or a hammer and sickle – both symbols historically associated with communism.
Under the Societies Act, if the movement has taken the form of a registered society in Singapore, the society cannot use any flag unless they have written consent from the Registrar or Assistant Registrar of Societies, added Mr Ng.
Ms Yuen said that the Building Control (Outdoor Advertising) Regulations prohibit the display of an advertisement or signboard without a licence, but those respectively relate to visual devices which promote goods, services or events and which identify a place or person.
In terms of how the Singapore flag should be displayed, Ms Yuen noted that the National Symbols Act and Regulations stipulate that a person who knowingly does an act disrespectful to the national flag, including allowing it to touch the ground, is breaking the law.
In public, national flags can only be flown from a flag pole and must not be flown at night, unless it is the National Day period or a period designated by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth – for example, when there is a sporting achievement.
