Re: "Nominee structures thrust into the spotlight", (Business, June 6).
Thailand's ongoing debate over foreign investment and land ownership misses the real target.
The issue isn't the influx of foreign capital, but the country's staggering wealth inequality.
With the elite controlling the vast majority of resources, ordinary Thais are already priced out of buying land or starting tourism businesses.
Compounded by underfunded education and a severe demographic crisis, the middle and lower classes are being left behind.
In premier tourist areas and islands, land prices are prohibitively high, leaving only the wealthy elite or foreigners able to afford them.
Yet, foreign-run businesses -- from dive shops to international restaurants -- are a bedrock of the tourism ecosystem.
While the current 51% Thai ownership requirement sounds fair on paper, ordinary Thais lack the capital to partner, and the elite ignore small businesses.
As a result, foreign investors are forced into proxy structures just to operate.
(Isn't it state overreach to be determining if a Thai shareholder is working at a company or not?)
Furthermore, every step of this process is facilitated by Thai landowners, lawyers, immigration, and labour officials.
For the state to suddenly seize assets or dissolve companies after waving them through these official channels is nothing short of state-sanctioned theft.
If a structure must be undone, a forced sale or buyback is the only fair approach.
While exclusive foreign enclaves or closed-off beaches (often shut by Thai corporations, too) are undesirable, targeting all foreign investment is self-defeating.
With a shrinking workforce and an education system in stagnation, Thailand desperately needs foreign initiative, expertise, ideas, and capital to survive.
Wealthy Thais own property and businesses abroad without fear of arbitrary seizure.
Thailand must modernise its laws to protect legitimate foreign investors rather than leading them by the nose only to take their money back.
It is time to create a transparent system where everyone benefits.
Timsahb
Long-term focus
Re: "Economics 101", (PostBag, June 5) & "Strong start to co-pay scheme", (BP, June 2).
We were happy to see the excited vendors and suppliers at the start of PM Anutin's 60:40 handout, for as my learned friend Khun Songdej Praditsmanont noted, "it has been a tough year for most of them".
But had Mr Anutin advanced to Economics 201, he'd have learned that "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime" (Lao Tzu).
For instance, about 70% of Thai rice farmers cultivate under 20 rai, for which a 10-15 horsepower walk-behind power tiller, costing an average of 50,000 baht (without subsidy), is sufficient.
Under Mr Anutin's 60:40 plan, modified to focus on productivity, five farmers could combine their handouts to pay for the 20,000 baht per tiller machine required.
Payback would then be just one to two years, with 8,000-20,000 baht annual savings after fuel and maintenance -- and the tiller could be rented for added income over the tiller's life of 10-15 years.
Yes, what I propose would be a shift in focus from boosting consumption to productivity.
Another version of focusing on productivity would be to have different levels of subsidy for different categories of purchases.
For example, for food, 25% subsidy; books, tablets, computers: 75%; vocational training courses: 75-90%; farm equipment rental: 50-75%; water-saving irrigation equipment: 75%; energy-efficient appliances: 50-75%.
What's key is to focus on the long run, not just tomorrow.
Burin Kantabutra
