ISDS Case Map
Thailand
The US still hopes to conclude a long-awaited U.S.-Thailand free trade agreement despite a number of unsettled issues, including the liberalization of the Thai financial sector, US Ambassador to Thailand Ralph Boyce said Friday.
Fearing a further surge in imports from Thailand under the Indo-Thai free trade agreement (FTA), India Inc has brought into sharp focus the urgent need to look internally and address the disabilities suffered by Indian companies in terms of high cost of production, higher import duties, infrastructure service cost and huge interest rate differential compared with the neighbouring country.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra stressed speeding up the process of finalising the Free Trade Area agreement between Thailand and India during his one-day working visit to the Indian capital on Friday.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra will arrive in India Friday on a one-day visit to find ways of pushing a free trade deal that will strengthen the growing trade relations between the two countries.
Financial-sector liberalisation could undermine efforts to negotiate a Thailand-US free-trade area agreement, according to Finance Ministry officials.
Local operators in the financial sector have voiced opposition to the financial liberalization between the United States and Thailand, saying that they would be put at disadvantage since the US financial services are more advanced than Thailand's.
The recently concluded round of US-Thai FTA negotiations brought little contentment for the Thais, especially those with direct interests in maintaining the existing degree of intellectual property right (IPR) protection already in place.
Thailand's Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday urged labour unions across the country to take a stand against the Thai-Japanese free trade area (FTA) ahead of a new round of talks in July.
Thailand on Monday became the first non-Muslim country to support Pakistan's bid to become a full dialogue partner of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and agreed to start talks on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the South Asian country.
Thailand and Pakistan have agreed in principle to draw up a free trade area (FTA) agreement under the Economic Comprehensive Partnership between the two nations.
