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Sansiri, Thailand’s leading and only fully-integrated property developer, brought The Thai New Year experience to Hong Kong.

SONGKRAN FEST featured exciting Thai performance including Muay Thai Boxing and Thai Cooking Show, authentic Thai food and Singha Beer. Attendees also experienced the spirit of Songkran with water splashing moments with friends and family. The carnival was attended by nearly 1,000, including clients of Sansiri and Asia Bankers Club members and guests.

MCs opened the event with an introduction of Sansiri.

Klong Yao Show (Thai long drum dance) in traditional Thai costumes and percussion instruments.

Songkran will not be Songkran without an epic water fight with friends and family.

Somtum Show – Not the typical way to make a yummy dish of Green Papaya Salad.

Muay Thai Boxing performance – combining entertaining performances with the ancient martial art of Muay Thai boxing.

Traditional and Colourful Toy-Sugar Making.

Tourism is a key contributor to the Thai economy and one of the biggest tourist attractions is shopping. As it stands currently, most tourists are only familiar with Siam Paragon – but that will change very soon. Bangkok’s biggest shopping mall is about to get bigger. The Mall Group (same operator as Siam Paragon) plans to invest THB20 billion into building ‘’Bangkok Mall’’ which is 3X the size of Siam Paragon.

Sitting on 160,000 square meters of land, Bangkok Mall will be the biggest mall in Thailand when it completes in Year 2021. Under the concept “City within the City,” Bangkok Mall will have a water park, theme park, department stores, cinemas and offices. The LINE Sukhumvit 101 is just 2 BTS stops away from the upcoming Bangkok Mall, providing us great potential capital appreciation in the future, when the mall completes, this weekend attracted  close to 600 customers attended over the weekend.

Above: Close to 600 investors attended the weekend exhibition.

Above: Terence Chan, Director of Golden Emperor, provided a presentation on the BTS-Sansiri project and Bangkok’s new Bangkok Mall.

Above: Vaulted ceiling features in every unit, ranging from 11.15 feet to 18.04 feet in height. The extended space renders the room airy and spacious.

Above: We have exclusively reserved high floors units for our clients to choose from.

Vietnamese textile and apparel export was stable with turnover hitting US$6.84 billion in the first quarter, a year on year increase of 11.2 percent, reported Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association.Most businesses have had orders for the second quarter this year. Vietnamese garment products have been present in over 40 countries and territories including the US, Japan, South Korea, China and the EU.

However, orders have been in shorter and shorter terms with price not increasing. Therefore, the association advised businesses to fully exploit the efficiency and capacity of machines and equipment to reduce costs.This year, the garment and textile industry has set a target of reaching a growth rate of 6.5-7 percent compared to 2016 with the turnover topping US$30 billion.

The biggest increase in investment capital in the textile and garment sector in the year so far is the expansion of the plant to manufacture polyester fibre products by Taiwanese Polytex Far Eastern Group in Binh Duong Province.This investor has been granted a license to increase investment capital by an additional US$485.8 million less than two years after making the first investment in the project, raising the total investment to nearly US$760 million.

Although the investment in Vietnam was admittedly to take advantage of business opportunities from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, Far Eastern affirmed that even if the TPP is suspended, their capital increase plan will remain unchanged.Earlier in June 2015, this investor was granted an investment certificate for the construction of the plant. The facility covered 99 hectares with the investment value of US$274 million for the first phase.

Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS) said that a number of Korean investors are also planning to expand their production in Dong Nai and Binh Duong with the ambition to exploit export markets in the near future.The decision to increase capital in the context that textile and garment export has just undergone a difficult year shows the confidence of foreign investors in the sector.Domestic textile and garment enterprises also have not lose sight of the expansion trend. Accordingly, Vietnam National Textile Garment Group (Vinatex) will launch the construction of Phu Cuong Fibre Factory phase II in Phu Cuong commune, Dinh Quan district, Dong Nai Province.

This project’s scale is as same as the first phase, with a designed output of over 5,000 tonnes of yarn per year, and holding a total investment of more than VND460 billion (US$21.85 million).In addition, the construction of Nam Dinh Fibre Factory phase II is also included in the 2017 investment plans of Vinatex, with the total investment of more than VND300 million (US$14.25 million), serving export products.

Source: Saigon Daily

Kasikorn Research Centre estimates 11.81 million international travellers will visit Thailand generating THB612 billion during January to April this year.

The bank’s think-tank unit said inbound tourism has been challenged since the beginning of this year due to a slowdown of tourist arrivals particularly from China and mainly so-called zero-dollar tours.

This resulted in a marginal growth of 0.7% in inbound tourism, January to March. Major markets that lifted arrivals in Q1 were Russia, Lao PDR, South Korea and India.

However, the bank said early April showed signs that foreign tourist arrivals were picking up, especially from China that suffered a decline in bookings since October 2016. The political situation between China and South Korea would help to drive Chinese tourists to travel to Thailand, the centre said.

In addition, other markets such as Russia would continue to help support the tourism industry.

The Songkran Festival was a strong driver that encouraged travel to Thailand. China and Malaysia were the two markets that delivered the highest tourist arrivals for the festival week.

Ministry of Tourism and Sports reported, Tuesday, that the Songkran festival generated THB45.43 billion for the tourism sector, 11 to 17 April, increasing 14.40% over the same period last year. Of that, THB8.49 billion came from domestic travellers (+6.45%) and THB36.94 billion from international travellers (+16.4%). The figures are based mainly on exit surveys that interview a random selection of tourists about their spending. Invariably they exaggerate their spend when interviewed.

The bank’s think-tank estimates that for January to April this year the country would attract 11.81 million international travellers increasing 1.2% during the same period last year and generating THB612 billion in tourism and related revenue an improvement of 3.1% over the same months in 2016.

Kasikorn Research Centre is a subsidiary company of Kasikorn Bank, which conducts tourism and business research mainly on Thailand’s economy including tourism with reliable recommendations and indicators on business prospects.

Source:TTR Weekly

South Korea’s Lotte Duty Free will open its first Thai store here as early as June, ending a local company’s exclusive grip on the market.Ranking third worldwide in the lucrative duty-free shop market, the Lotte Group unit also has stores in Japan, the U.S. and Indonesia.

Its first Thai store will open inside Show DC, a commercial complex roughly 30 minutes from Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang international airports. The roughly 10,000-sq.-meter space will cost slightly more than 8 billion baht ($233 million) to build and sell about 20,000 items, centering on South Korean cosmetics.

Various entry barriers have kept local conglomerate King Power Group the sole player in Thailand’s duty-free market. But the government has paved the way for market deregulation, with an eye toward attracting more foreign tourists. King Power operates duty-free stores at major Thai airports and other locations. It aims to invest 2.5 billion baht this year in Thailand and increase sales by 20% to 92 billion baht.

U.K. research company GlobalData estimates that Thailand’s duty-free market will grow by 8% on average in the five years through 2021, buoyed by an increasing number of foreign tourists. That growth rate is the fifth highest in the Asia-Pacific region, trailing only India, Japan, China and South Korea.

Source:nikkei