Thai PM to convene meeting on southern woes

BANGKOK, Aug 6 (TNA) - Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra will convene parties concerned, including the National Security Council (NSC), the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Center (SBPAC) and the Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC), as well as the Malaysian ambassador to Bangkok on August 8 to discuss proposed solutions to violent unrest in Thailand's insurgency-plagued far South. Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit told journalists on Monday that participants of the August 8 meeting will consider proposals, namely a curfew and the pros and cons of implemented and planned measures. Meanwhile, Bank of Thailand or BOT's Senior Director of Southern Office Pruettipong Srimachand, reported that tourism in the Thai deep South had shrunk in the second quarter of this year due to impacts of violent unrest in the region, amid the expanding tourism in the overall Thai South in both its Andaman and the Gulf of Thailand coastal sides. Pruettipong also acknowledged that overall economic and financial conditions in the Thai South had also expanded in a slower pace during the April-June 2012 period, in line with a slowdown in industrial production in the region caused by reduced supply of local farm produce, namely processed rubber and oil palm, although fisheries and rubber cultivation has been growing. The BOT senior official said that prices of farm products in the Thai South, including those of shrimp and natural rubber, have also dropped caused by impacts from global economic problems, including those in the debt-ridden eurozone, and that lower income has affected local farmers’ spending on consumer goods, resulting in the slowdown economy in the southern Thai region. The BOT senior official projected, however, that the southern Thai economy should be improving in the second half of this year, thanks to its growing tourism, particularly boosted by rising Chinese and Russian visitors in the region.(TNA)