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Sports, IT business also hold potential
WICHIT CHANTANUSORNSIRI
In a strategic shift tinged with irony, the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly, the country's largest cigarette manufacturer, is considering investing in hospitals and the health care sector, says newly appointed managing director Prachuab Tantinon.
Mr Prachuab said the TTM had retained Thammasat University to study options for developing the state enterprise's existing hospital.
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| TTM’s existing hospital serves its employees but Thammasat University is helping to study an expanded role. SOMCHAI POOMLARD |
The TTM hospital, built to serve employees, is located within the agency's grounds next to Benjasiri Park on Rama IV and Ratchadaphisek Road.
The investment plan is aimed at developing the hospital to become a top medical services centre to supplement the TTM's operations and revenues. Other potential investment lines include developing a sports complex and IT-related businesses.
"The TTM needs to diversify into other business sectors if we are to survive in the future," Mr Prachuab said plainly.
Competition from imported foreign cigarette brands has steadily cut into the TTM's revenues and market share. Pressure on sales will be increased in the future by anti-smoking laws, already among the strongest in the region.
Mr Prachuab said social pressure against cigarette smoking would only increase in the future.
"While we are profitable today, who can say what the future will hold?," he asked rhetorically.
He added that within 10 years the TTM aimed to generate its revenues equally from cigarette sales and non-cigarette businesses.
One of the most profitable state enterprises, for the first 10 months of fiscal 2008 to July the TTM posted net profits of 5.72 billion baht, compared with 6.23 billion for all of 2007 and 5.21 billion in 2006.
The TTM plans to relocate its production facilities outside Bangkok under a 16.2-billion-baht programme already approved by the cabinet.
Mr Prachuab, a former chief executive of the fixed-line operator TT&T, is a non-smoker and said his children detested cigarette smoke.
However, he said he accepted the TTM post for the challenge of the job and of the situation of the state-owned enterprise.
"Certainly the government has no policy of encouraging cigarette smoking. But so long as people cannot stop, the TTM will remain an instrument of the government in countering imported cigarettes," he said.
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