ISDS Case Map
Thailand
A seminar heard yesterday that although US negotiators had asked Thailand to fully deregulate its financial services and allow US investors unrestricted stakes in the brokering and banking sectors, Bangkok was insisting that the sector was not ready to face direct competition.
Supara Janchitfah looks at the rules of the Thai-US FTA negotiation process and finds them more favourable to the American side.
Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Somkid Jatusripitak asked academics to keep an open mind on the proposed Thai-US Free Trade Area agreement, saying that the FTA would benefit the two countries equally.
Economists at the KASIKORN Research Centre (KRC) on Sunday urged Thailand's service sector to adapt if it plans to survive stiff competition caused by free trade area (FTA) agreements Thailand has signed with other countries.
The new Royal Plaza alliance of senators and civic groups has boosted the credibility of the movement to oust Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and produced an array of new issues from free trade to human rights violations and the plight of the rural poor
A free-trade agreement (FTA) that Thailand signed with China a little over two years ago has begun to worry politicians and academics, who say it has proved disastrous for the Southeast Asian country's farmers.
The National Economic and Social Advisory Council yesterday warned the prime minister not to let the immediate gains from opening trades with the US blind him to the latent risks of rushing into an economic partnership.
On 7 February 2006, the FTA Watch warned about the catastrophe that would arise from the US's FTA proposal to Thailand on Intellectual Property Rights which was submitted in the sixth round of negotiations.
Details of US proposals in free-trade talks with Thailand - perceived by many Thais as “forbidden information” the government has tried to cover up - were recently posted for all to see in cyberspace. Witoon Leanchamroon, director of BioThai, a non-government organisation working for bio-diversity and community rights, said at a press conference yesterday he had been told a group of Americans involved in public health issues had posted a full text of the patent chapter from the Thai-US free trade talks at www.bilaterals.org.
For the United States, intellectual property rights represent the single most valuable asset in light of the new reality of information-based economies and where they derive their national wealth. The supremacy of the US as a global power depends on how effective it is in acquiring and maintaining its ownership of knowledge assets.
