Thai DPM:Implementation of water solutions to start early next year

BANGKOK, December 22 (TNA) - Deputy Prime Minister Kittirat Na-Ranong, in his capacity as a deputy chair of the government’s water strategy committee, has announced that Thailand's water solutions and development of flood prevention systems will certainly start early next year. Kittirat, who is also Commerce Minister, affirmed that the Thai government's master plan on water management will be completed in the coming days and many clear measures will be implemented right away. Kittirat said that he believes the measures will successfully protect the country's urban areas and industrial sites from floods next year despite, probably, impacts from strong storms, acknowledging that Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, former deputy prime minister Virabongsa Ramakura, who is now chair of the water strategy committee, and all the government committee's members are doing their best to ensure that the implementation of the country's water solutions and development of flood prevention systems will certainly start in January 2012. Meanwhile, Nanthawal Sakuntanak, Director-General of the Thai Ministry of Commerce's Department of Export Promotion, said that many trading partners want to see clear flood prevention plans in Thailand following the flooding crisis this year, but she believes concerned authorities will now be able to timely cope with possible inundations next year and her department will inform over 1,000 flood-affected business operators of new export promotion measures in January 2012. The senior official assessed that flood-affected Thai exports should be recovering from the second half of next year, despite its slowdown in the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year, and the country's exports should be able to grow by up to 15 per cent in 2012 despite global risk factors, especially impacts from the lingering debt crisis in Europe, pointing out that the major US and Japanese markets should resume their growing momentum next year and Thailand will be, instead, intensifying marketing campaigns in Southeast Asia with new marketing plans to take shape early next year. (TNA)