Catching up on chips
Re: "Chips set for latest hub push", (BP, Oct 26).
Knowing that the government now has enough sense to establish the National Semiconductor Board is gratifying. Malaysia and Vietnam have already outpaced us in this area by leaps and bounds.
The gaps in growth rate would not have been so wide if ours had been less than 3%, while Malaysia and Vietnam had growth rates in the range of 6%.
The coming of heavy demand for semiconductors was expected many years ago, and outsourcing was expected in this region. Previous leading industries like oil and gas, auto manufacturing, and telecom services are no longer top industries.
The top in the current world are semiconductors, internet content, software infrastructure and drug manufacturing.
We have geared up our stance at a rather late stage, but as the old saying goes -- it's better late than never.
Nomad by necessity
Re: "BoT shocks with policy rate trim", (Business, Oct 17) & "Navigating new foreign income rules", (Business, June 27).
I've been living in Thailand for over 13 years. I'm married to a Thai lady, and we live in a house with a mortgage subject to an interest rate of 7.5%. With rates as low as they are, my wife requested a reduction, but our request was flatly rejected.
As she is now a housewife living comfortably on my pension, no other bank will take over the loan as she is unemployed -- aged 56.
With new tax rules coming, and despite coming from a country with a double taxation agreement, the new tax planning has scuppered my plans to live out my life here. So we are putting the house up for sale and will live as nomads between Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. So I hope the brains behind the new plans gets what is coming to them. Screw the shortsighted policy.
A cautionary tale
Re: "TM6 forms sidelined as electronic system is created", (BP, Oct 16).
Many countries have moved to electronic travel authorisation (ETA) systems for tourists to record entry details and immigration formalities.
Experience from other countries has shown that well-designed ETA systems can serve to speed up immigration processing at entry points.
In contrast, poorly designed systems can have the opposite effect.
A case in "how not to do it" is the Philippines eTravel system that was put in place in late 2022.
The system is cumbersome to access, exhaustively complicated and collects vast amounts of superfluous information.
Each time I've entered the Philippines in the past two years, I see large numbers of visitors stalled in the arrival hall of the airport terminal.
Most of them struggle to complete the tiring eTravel pages on their mobile phones.
Moreover, the task is rendered virtually impossible for many travellers who are not able to immediately access WiFi upon landing.
The result is long delays in arrival processing and much grumbling among tourists.
Thailand would be well advised to learn from the experiences of other countries--both good and bad--to ensure that whatever ETA system is developed is simple, easy to access, and fully de-bugged before being used.