Winners of ‘Thailand Through Your Eyes’

A painting competition ‘Thailand Through Your Eyes’ was held on August 20 and 21 at Bahrain Arts Society by the Royal Thai Embassy. This competition was held in order to promote better understanding of Thailand and its people. Participants were categorised into two age groups -eight to 13, and 14 and 20.

Winners were announced, honoured and awarded certificates this week at a ceremony on the society premises on Budaiya Road, which was attended by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Nazar Al Baharna, Thai Ambassador Suphat Chitranukroh and society president Ali Al Mahmeed.

Winners of the 14-20 age group were: First, Hussain Aqeel, who received BD400; second, Hend Ali Al Mahmeed, who received BD250; and joint third, Fatima Enas Mohammed Ali and Zahra Taher Al Bahrani, who shared the BD150 prize.

Joint first in the eight-13 age group were Avinash Sarandon and Vishal Thamizharasan, who shared the BD200 prize.

Joint second were Zahra Abdulrasool and Noor Adel Mousa, sharing the BD150 prize; and joint third were Roshna Sarandon and Zainab Hussain Al Mahdi, sharing the BD100 prize.

Cisco’s WiMax network in Mae Fah University

Though the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand has a population of over 67.3 million citizens, according to an ITU report, only about 8.5 million have access to the Internet and only 600,000 have broadband services. Seeing this opportunity for broadband growth in Thailand, companies are trying to set their foothold here. Last week, NEC announced it is providing mobile WiMAX equipment to hospitals in Thailand.

Again, Mae Fah Luang University in Thailand will have the WiMAX network equipment from Cisco Systems deployed by TT&T. This will be Thailand’s first production in WiMAX network and Cisco’s first WiMAX win in the Asia Pacific market.

Mae Fah Luang University is located in the Chiang Rai province of north Thailand. “We chose Cisco because of its proven expertise and leadership in networking technology,” said Prachuab Tantinon, managing director of TT&T Public Company Limited. Tests conducted in a Bangkok school delivered broadband speeds under non line-of-sight conditions at ranges of 5-7 kilometers.

Key interest rate raised by Central Bank of Thailand

In order to combat the inflationary pressures in the Thailand economy, the central bank of the country raised its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 3.75% this Wednesday. The move was in line with market expectations.

The Bank of Thailand released a statement saying, “Given the elevated level of inflation and inflation expectations, as well as uncertainty of oil prices in the periods ahead, the MPC [monetary policy committee] assessed that the risks to inflation remained an important issue of concern.”

July’s consumer price inflation surged to 9.2% year-on-year, up from 8.9% year-on-year. Wednesday’s rate hike was the “second straight monthly hike after maintaining the rate steady since August 2007,” said analysts at Action Economics. “While balancing risks of higher inflation against slower growth, it [the central bank] saw the need to tighten in order to contain inflation expectations,” they added. In Bangkok, the SET stock index closed up 1.1%.