Dogmatix

Thailand reports daily low of COVID-19 cases. ???? Actually it has reported a sudden spike up including the ATK cases.

Why do Thais have to make peace with Sinovac at the grossly inflated price of B1,700, which is probably only marginally effective, when better alternatives with credible stage 3 trials peer reviewed in reputable journal can be obtained for a fraction of the price?

Bretta pistols were all the rage 20 or 30 years ago when they were still used by US forces but now Thais are crazy about Glocks which are easier to shoot and just as reliable with a greater cool factor. Also spare parts high capacity mags are readily available and Glocks are easy to tune up. There must a lot of unwanted Berettas floating around as well as old revolvers, of which he also had one. Thais often don't realise they can easily inherit a gun from a deceased family member to register it in their own name and legally sell it, if they have no use for it. So they just tend to sell old guns of deceased family members into the black market, where they can fall into the hands of sleezy farang yobs and crims in Pattaya, Hua Hin & etc. Cops can't hold anyone responsible for these guns as the registered owner is dead and the family will just say they never saw the gun in the deceased's possessions, so he must have lost it or sold it before he died. Another route for distribution of genuine firearms is the Interior Ministry's civil service welfare scheme that imports huge quantities of guns to sell at discounted prices to civil servants, state enterprise employees and even local defense olunteers. This is a massive money spinner for corrupt ministry officials who control the import and distribution of the guns. Many civil servants sell their guns into the black market, file a police report of a lost or stolen gun and apply to buy another one.

SRT is stting on assets given to it by the King. There are some arguments that it cannot sell because it holds the land effectively in trust for King and country and should manage the assets properly taking care that the use is for the good of the nation, so as not to betray the King's trust and remembering that SRT was started as not for profit, rather than flog them off to businesses that couldn't care less. Personally I feel that argument has merit but getting SRT to manage the assets properly would be an uphill task.

SRTseems to have been unable to raise fares since the 770s which is a bit of a problem. Another problem is that its powerful union was the only state enterprise union to successfully resist being forced into the government pension scheme and retain its much better benefits defined scheme. The result is that SRT pays more in post retirement benefits than than it gets revenues. It is riddled with corruption and dominated by mafia management and unions and anyone who attempts any kind of reform will immediately get death threats against their families, just like BMTA. Much of its land is leased on sweetheart deals, e.g. Central Lard Prao, the Railway Golf Course Hua Hin to Singha beer and probably the Centara Hotel Hua Hin too. Then there is the huge railway marshalling yard in Bkk. Politicians have been itching to get their hands on the land for decades. It will be interesting to see how it will go. The article doesn't mention how SRT will solve its entrenched problems after selling its land probably for way less than market value.

Does it make any difference, if foreigners are present at the land office? I have often not been present at the negotiations to avoid pushing purchase prices up but go to the land office and transfer to my own name as a Thai citizen. Once the seller seemed quite agitated and said to Mrs Dog that it was somewhat deceptive of her not say her husband was a farang as she would have bargained for more money 555. Then it turned out that she was the one who was dishonest as she had lied about a road project that was planned in the area, saying it was yet to be approved. The land office director told me it had been approved but she was the one blocking it because she was afraid some of her would be cut off. Most sellers and land officers have been very friendly.

I have done this several times with three types of encumbrance: bank mortgage; mortgage to gold shop; and khai fak (sale with right of redemption. Khai fak is the easiest because the lender who holds the title will always come to the land office, assuming they don't run away to try to allow the underlying owner's right to redeem go past the expiry date, so they can keep the land. Assuming the lender will play ball to allow themselves to be redeemed, they will come to collect their money at the land office. So you are doing a three way transaction where you are paying off the lender with any residual amount going to the seller, who signs documents. Khai fak is better for individual lenders as the title automatically passes to them without any court procedures, if the borrower defaults, even though borrowers will often plead for roll overs or special rights to buy back even years after expiry. I have ended up several pieces of land like this and will sell back at a fair price after expiry, if they can come up iwith the money which has happened but most can't come up with the money even after negotiating a price. Gold shops are often a good source of cash to country folk as they have unlicensed lending businesses on the side and many are willing to lend on mortgages, rather than khai fak, which involves much lower fees and tax to the borrower but the gold shop has to take the risk of years of court case to foreclose, if the borrower defaults. since they have economy of scale and capital, it is worth their while to do this and the lower cost makes them more competitive than khai fak lenders. I have seen gold shop owners with stacks of title deeds for agricultural land, all of which I assumed came from foreclosures. Gold shops are usually easier to deal with than banks as they are more flexible. The gold hops use brokers to get deals and the deals I have done buying land mortgaged to gold shops were organised by the broker. We stopped off at the gold shop on the way to the land office, having drawn up a sales and purchase agreement. The gold shop owner was paid and signed documents and power of attorney to the broker who signed for him at the land office where the balance was paid to the seller. Bank mortgages in my own experience are more of a PITA and I will think carefully how badly I want that piece of land before touching them. Banks are usually inflexible and in the two or three deals I have done that involved banks, the bank insisted on being paid off in advance before releasing the mortgage and was not willing to send someone to the land office or make any special effort to allow the whole transaction to be done in one day. They have their own rigid procedures and could not care less about the convence of the buyer or seller or whether the deal gets done or not. So we had to pay the seller the amount owing the bank on a sales and purchase agreement and trust them to pay the bank and show up at the land office. We eyeballed them pretty closely and Mrs Dog had been to school with the sister of one of the sellers who actually later bought the land back from us at a higher price a couple of years later. But, as I say I will usually not go and look at land, if there is a bank mortgage on it and there is no connection to the seller. Sellers and brokers often just give you a copy of the front of the deed, so you cannot see mortgage or khai fak on the back but there again i will not look at land without seeing the complete deed. Unfortunately there are no good ways to buy mortgaged land that don't involve trusting the seller. If they are getting a reasonable amount of cash after paying the morgager, there is at least an incentive to go through with the transaction. It should be possible in most cases to pay the bank direct, which reduces the risk. If you have any doubts about the seller, the best thing is to walk away. There are plenty more pieces of land out there that don't have bank mortgages on them. Since it is more difficult to obtain bank mortgages, most encumbered land in rural areas tends to be khai fak.

Over 99% of Thais have no clue how economies work and the PM is probably one of them.

You are right. Thailand is between a rock and hard place. And if Thaksin or a Thaksin nominee got into place, you could be sure he would want Thammanart in his cabinet. He is like a younger Chalerm. Thaksin would also love all the new laws to suppress freedom of expression and the knobbling of the courts, the NACC other independent agencies. In fact it is quite likely that Prayut and Prawit will be forced to form an alliance with Thaksin in order to remain in power after the elections. So Thais would get both the rock and the hard place.

The UK is also not recognising any vaccination certificates issued in India, including those for Indian AZ which is actually approved in the UK because they imported several million doses and administered them. There was an issue that France would not accept Brits vaccinated in the UK with Indian AZ and the UK protested. For now its about the trustworthiness of the certificates rather than the vaccines. I think they will eventually accept Thai certificates for AZ, Pfizer or Moderna. When they refer to mix and match, they mean AZ+Pfizer or Moderna, not Sinovac or Sinopharm. I don't think they can recognise Chinese or Russian vaccines because they haven't approved them and believe they are ineffective against delta.

The problem with the vaccination of school kids is the CRA, which earlier issued a royal decree authorising itself to import and distribute vaccines on an emergency basis, went ahead with vaccinating school kids with Sinopharm, based on its own review of data, without waiting for FDA's approval of SP for kids. Perhaps the royal decree authorised them to bypass the FDA but the FDA did approve SP for adults before they imported it. There is apparently some anger from parents who were pushed by schools to agree to let their kids get SP because they weren't told they were being asked to approve a vaccine that is not approved for kids by the FDA (or WHO). The Thai FDA has approved Pfizer for 12-17 year olds and that will be rolled out soon, or has maybe started. CRA's initiative to import SP was very welcome at the time there was a chronic shortage and the only alternative for many was SV anyway. Many private firms were able to get their staff vaccinated with SP well ahead the schedule offered by the government thanks to CRA. Now there is more AZ available and some Pfizer has arrived it is unclear what role SP still has to play in the vaccine roll out, particularly after the government switched from SV+SV to SV+AZ. Since SP is similar to SV, people must assume that SP+SP is no better than the now obsolete SV+SV but there has been authorisation for SP+AZ. CRA obviously has a very useful role to play and is able to cut through red tape effectively. Hopefully it will be able to import mRNA vaccines in the near future.

Do you think the mega corruption in the rice pledging scheme would have been uncovered, resulting in decades in prison for some, if Yingluck had remained in power? Do you think there is no corruption in this government because the receipts have not been found left carelessly lying around?

The major advantages are the lack of any equivalent of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in China and the heavily padded price tag.

Lead poisoning is endemic in Pattaya. Perhaps his doctor advised him to take early retirement to avoid this health issue.

Strip out the Chinese vaccines from the numbers.

I don't think the UK recognises any vaccine certification from Thailand yet. Indians are up in arms that their certificates are not recognised even those who had Indian AZ which was also imported and used in the UK. They started recognising certifications only from Europe and the US. I think they are slowly getting around to other countries. I don't think Chinese vaccines or Sputnik will ever count as vaccines in the UK or US though.

Just amend the Condo Act to allow foreigners to buy up to 100% of freehold condos but only the foreign owners of the first 49% of the usable space get to vote. That way the freehold land of the condo remains technically controlled by Thais. I am sure the Chinese are not interested in attending the condo AGMs anyway. Land is too emotional an issue for Thais and will make Prayut very unpopular in the election if he railroads it through before then. Chinese should not be allowed to own land anyway because Thais are not allowed to own land in China. I think allowing longer than 30 year leases to be registered at the Land Dept is a solution that Thais could accept more readily. The law already allows 50 year leases for land for commercial purposes in certain areas but conditions are probably too onerouos for most. Just allowing 50, 60 or maybe even 90 year leases for up to 1 rai land in housing estates will be good enough in my opinion. Prayut is obviously listening to property developers who hope make fast bucks ripping off Chinese buyers. Let's see what happens when he has to listen to the constant sniping of ordinary Thais who are all against this. Compromises might suddenly start looking likt a good idea.

No worry about land prices because they will never allow it.

Many condos already have a big problem with not getting a quorum for AGMs etc and often the farangs are the only ones interested. This will help a lot.

The reported that CRA had already vaccinated 2,000 school children with SP which it confirmed has not been approved by Thai FDA for children. It seems FDA approval is not required in the case of SP but the government is unlikely to take responsibility if anything goes amiss. A friend says he is getting heavy pressure from the British headmaster of his daughter's international school to sign for her to get SP without mentioning the lack of approval or explaining why the school cannot get into the government's Pfizer roll out.

It would definitely be galling for those who have jumped through hoops to become citizens to buy land. But don't worry. The land ownership will die a death or will be made virtually impossible to do. I think they might look at increasing or eliminating the foreign ownership limit on condos though which has already been in the works for some years. That would make more sense because there is no demand from Thais for many resort condos and less threat to Thais because foreigners, especially Chinese have been condo buyers for years. Expats are up in arms but they ain't seen nothing yet. This is more of threat to the average expat than the Elite Card was because that was more of a sort of club membership than an overhaul of the visa regulations that were just fudged to allow three monthly roll overs of visas without really creating a 5 year visa. If they get even a part of this done, they probably won't be able to resist raising the bar on retirement and marriage visas. The finanicial requirements haven't been raised since the early 2000s and are due for an uplift. But the last time the people who already visas based on the old requirements were grandfathered in permanently at the old rate. However, the numbers were much smaler then. Anyway I am sure all here will still feel much better off as citizens.

Look at the history of foreign land ownership laws in Thailand. In 1999 they allowed a rai of residential land in certain zones under impossible conditions and with the permission of the minister. In the days of the treaties until the early 70s when foreigners were allowed to own land, the permission of the minister (the King in the days of absoute monarchy) was also needed. Foreigners often complained that waited for years for this permission, although, of course, there were foreign purchases. The British Club is a treaty purchase that survives to this day. HSBC, Standard Chartered and East Asiatic Co also owned large pieces of land in central Bangkok, as did of course the British Embassy. The British Club had a good connection with King Vajiravudh at the time it got permission to buy its land, some of which was actually purchased from the King. I am sure the other foreign companies that owned land had good connections to get the approvals. I don't know if there were many ordinary Joes that were able to buy land in the treaty days.

If they granted land ownership rights for 5 or 10 years, you can imagine the bribes that would be demanded to renew the special visa when they know you own land. That is basically what happens with BOI privileges, although I am not saying the BOI asks for bribes. I think that foreign owned BOI promoted companies prefer not put their investment capital into land. It make more sense to rent or to set up a Thai nominee company to buy the land regardless of the BOI promotion.

If you are so wealthy, you can indeed move all your copious wealth to Thailand. You can invest in a business (with Thai partner owning 51% of course) and apply for PR and then citizenship. With just a fraction of your wealth, you can invest in a medium size business and hire a capable farang to manage it and just sit on the beach waiting for your PR and citizenship which will just drop into your lap with that sort of wealth.

I have already seen FB posts from Thais saying that Thai people will become beggars in their own country having to pay high rents for somewhere to live to rapacious foreign landlords. It seems too late. They should have worried about that before they allowed children of Chinese migrant workers to become Thai just by being born here. They already own most of the wealth and squeeze Thai people dry. Letting wealthy foreigners maybe own a rai each under hugely restrictive conditions is not going much difference now. But this is all familiar from when the Democrat government in 1999 decided to amend the Land Code to allow foreigners investing B40m in certain special assets in the hope wealthy foreigners would come in droves and drop helicopter money to bail out the moribund Thai real estate sector at the time. The original bill also allowed foreigners married to Thais to buy land without having to invest B40bn but that was scrapped after bitter attacks in parliament including from the government's own MPs who said Thais would become beggars in their own country etc etc. Finally there was a backlash from the bureaucracy that stalled on drafting the ministerial regulations for 3 years and then refused to issue any of the qualifying investments. Meanwhile government ministers were taking credit for having opened up the real estate sector to foreigners. I think we all know that nothing will come of this. If it does, foreigners already here should prepare themselves for new regulations raising the bar visas making it harder for the not well heeled to renew visas on the basis they are no longer required.