Thailand and Britain have launched the Thai-UK Business Leadership Council, a new body to help build businesses, create innovative partnerships and encourage the governments of both countries to foster trade and investment.
The British prime minister's trade envoy to Thailand, Mark Garnier, and the Thai prime minister's special envoy, Virasakdi Futrakul, said on Tuesday in London that they had invited senior business leaders from Thai and British companies to come together in the council.
The council will focus on an agenda set by business, not government, and work on the private sector's behalf, they said.
The inaugural meeting of the council is set for this autumn.
Tevin Vongvanich, president and chief executive of state energy giant PTT Plc, said: "Close collaboration between the members will enable the identification of factors to enable trade and investment flows in both directions to be increased, perhaps through improvements in policies and regulations, which will result in great economic development and benefit on a bilateral basis, with potentially regional and global positive ramifications."
The chairman of Rolls-Royce's International Advisory Council, Lord Charles Powell of Bayswater, said such initiatives could take relationships between countries to a new level.
"Rolls-Royce, like other UK companies, is committed to building long-term partnerships in Thailand and Southeast Asia more broadly," he said.