Vietnam has asked Laos to delay by 10 years the construction of a controversial multi-billion-dollar dam on the Mekong River to allow for more studies about its effects on the lives of millions of people who rely on the waterway for food and commerce. Vietnam’s natural resources minister, Pham Khoi Nguyen, made the announcement Wednesday in Hanoi, telling reporters that documents received so far from the Lao government were inadequate and lacked “realistic” statistical data. Nguyen is the chairman of the four-nation Mekong River Commission, a grouping of experts from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.  The commission failed last week to reach a consensus on whether to support further consultations on the Xayaburi dam project. Laos expects huge economic gains from selling most of the 1,260-kilowatt dam’s power to Thailand, and has argued that further studies would not be practical.  But environmental groups and other Southeast Asian governments say the dam will disrupt fish migration patterns down river and otherwise have a negative impact on the region. The Xayaburi project is the first of 11 proposed dams on the lower Mekong.  Ministers from the four countries are expected to hold further talks on the project in Laos later this year. Some information for this report was provided by AFP.

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Vietnam Seeks 10-Year Delay on Lao Dam Project

At the end of 2009, real GDP was back at pre-crisis levels, as measured in seasonally adjusted terms.
Overall, domestic demand should provide a positive but limited contribution to growth: vulnerable households lost ground in 2009 and risks are substantial in 2010, as falling agricultural output due to the current drought may offset opportunities from the improved overall economic environment. Household consumption levels, which are highly correlated with the poverty rate, contracted in 2009 despite the rebound in the last quarter of the year, suggesting a likely increase in the poverty rate compared to 2008, especially when compounded by the loss in purchasing power from the food and fuel crisis of 2008. The outlook for 2010 is uncertain : average wages are likely to increase, thanks to the reallocation of labor from agriculture to manufacturing. Although labor markets appear very tight, with unemployment below 1 %, the data do not account for the large number of workers who moved to lower-productivity jobs in agriculture and informal services due to the crisis. Many of these workers are now returning to manufacturing, which offers higher wages than agriculture.

The relative strength and power of sovereign wealth funds is massively increasing, and the money has to go somewhere.
Many Thai companies don’t even really need to be in the market, with only a limited need to raise capital.

Despite the failure of the BSE, the concept of an orderly, officially supported securities market in Thailand had by then attracted considerable attention. In this regard, the Second National Economic and Social Development Plan (1967-1971) proposed, for the first time,
a plan for the establishment of such a market, with appropriate facilities and procedures for securities trading.

In 1969, as recommended by the World Bank, the government acquired the services of Professor Sidney M. Robbins from Columbia University to study the development channels of the Thai capital market. Professor Robbins had previously served as Chief Economist at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The same year proved an eventful one for the Thai capital market, as the Bank of Thailand also formed a Working Group on Capital Market Development, which was assigned the task of establishing the stock market. A year later, in 1970, Professor Robbins produced a comprehensive report entitled “A Capital Market in Thailand”. This report became the master plan for the future development of the Thai capital market.