Protests in Bangkok spell trouble for ITU show

The Thai capital has been facing tremendous pressures arising from demonstrations being held all across the city especially surrounding the government and UN offices. Although this has adversely affected thai tourism and hotel businesses, not all has ended here. The situation entered uncharted waters on Sunday when crowd of pro-government supporters converged on central Bangkok.

The mob protests have specifically hit the attendance of those planning to visit the Telecom Asia in Bangkok: International Telecommunication Union’s largest telecom event for 2008. Being obviously worried about their safety, the intending trade visitors will have to cut down on their trip to the ITU show if the transportation gets affected too.

So far the roads as well as airlines have been operating without much ado but the apparent support from the People’s Alliance for Democracy could lead to disruption of transport, airline, power and telecom services in coming days. Though it will be too early to evaluate the entire situation, the ongoing trouble will certainly have some impact on the proceedings of the ITU show.

Bangladesh-Thailand : Potentials from Partnership

Addressing the inaugural session of a seminar on ” Bangladesh-Thailand: Potentials from Partnership,” organized by the Thai Embassy marking the 36th founding anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries at a hotel, the Foreign Secretary Touhis Hossain said that for strengthening the trade relations between two countries stress has to be laid on increasing Thailand’s imports from Bangladesh.

Hossain said Thai exports to Bangladesh increased US $ 414 million in 2006-07 from US $ 158 million in 2001-02 where as Bangladesh’s exports unfortunately hovered around US $ 20 million. He said excluding India, the largest number of Bangladeshis visit Thailand for tourism, business, medical treatment and for shopping.

Ambassador of Thailand Chalermpol Thanchitt said that the annual trade volume between the two countries is US $ 500 million and that the Thai investment was US $ 3.5 million in Bangladesh in 2007. He said about 50,000 Bangladeshis annually visit Thailand while the number of Thai people visiting Bangladesh is about 6400.

The two leaders hoped that the cooperation and friendship between the two countries could be could be built upon further for the progress of the two countries and peoples.