To help absorb red-shirt protests’ impact on retailers and shopping mall operators around Ratchaprasong area, the Commerce Ministry is encouraging them to join its Blue Flag campaign to clear out their stocks. The Commerce Ministry is set to organize a Blue Flag fair in celebration of the 60th anniversary of His Majesty the King’s coronation.

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Protest-afflicted Traders to Join Blue Flag Campaign

Thailand’s open and tightly integrated into global trade economy experienced a V-shape contraction and recovery from late 2008 through late 2009
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.

Lagging the chart was paper and printing materials, with a -1.3% TSR for 2009, professional services with a meager 4.5% gain, and property funds up 31%.The Shareholder Scorecard, published annually by the Bangkok Post and the AWR Lloyd-PYI group, is an analysis of the two factors that underlie investor returns — dividends and capital gains.
Thai valuations still trail the region considerably. Price-to-earnings multiples for the Thai market were 18.9 times for 2009, compared to, say, 25 to 30 times for the Australian, Japanese and Shanghai markets and valuations could be higher, if not for the political instability in Thailand over the past several years.

In 1972 the Government took a further step in this direction by amending the “Announcement of the Executive Council No. 58 on the Control of Commercial Undertakings Affecting Public Safety and Welfare”. The changes extended Government control and regulation over the operations of finance and securities companies, which until then had operated fairly freely. Following these amendments, in May 1974, long-awaited legislation establishing “The Securities Exchange of Thailand” (SET) was enacted. This was followed by revisions to the Revenue Code at the end of the year, allowing the investment of savings in the capital market. By 1975 the basic legislative framework was in place and on April 30, 1975, “The Securities Exchange of Thailand” officially started trading. On January 1, 1991 its name was formally changed to “The Stock Exchange of Thailand” (SET).