Thai food exports keep growing

BANGKOK, May 12 (TNA) - The Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) says that Thai food exports have kept expanding, with their growth expected nearly 6 per cent this year. FTI Chairman Chen Namchaisiri projected on May 11 that Thai food exports in 2016 should grow by 5.8 per cent on average in 2016, earning the Kingdom about 950 billion baht. Chen told journalists that Thai food exports are expected to particularly grow significantly in other member countries of the ASEAN Community (AC), especially in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV). Chen also foresaw that Thai food exports should grow in a frog-leap to 50–55 per cent over the next five years, from 49 per cent in 2015, when the country earned approximately 897.5 billion baht. According to the FTI chief, the Thai alternative energy industry, especially biomass which is closely to other related local agricultural industries, is expected to grow in the long-term. The FTI chief revealed that a biomass power plant, invested by a Japanese firm since 2015, will start operating next year with growing demand for crops used for the production of the energy. Presently, the FTI chief noted, biomass energy has a market value of about 73 billion baht in Thailand, while the country exported biomass energy pellets, worth approximately 500 million baht, to South Korea, Japan and China in 2014. (TNA)