Bangkok Post : Yes minister

HOME REVIEW

The government began an aggressive public relations campaign to raise the profile of cabinet ministers flying beneath the public's perception; after a poll on cabinet popularity produced a large number of "Who's she?" responses, a special amount of taxpayer funds was given to a PR agency to raise the profile of Information and Communications Technology Minister, Ranongruk Suwunchwee, who was judged in the poll as pretty un-prominent; for a mere 30 million baht, a "special adviser" and (allegedly) a tame newspaper were hired to teach Mrs Ranongruk how to get good press coverage, by highlighting everything she does at work, especially (Caution: non-humour area ahead) when she does nothing; the report raised many questions, including: Wouldn't it be cheaper to get good ministers?

Mrs Ranongruk and her Information and Communications Technology Ministry officials get the PR money, but they are braced for a 40 percent cut in their ministry's budget for the coming year, beginning in October, from 3 billion to 1.2 billion baht; first to go will be the "intelligent network" and government email projects; permanent-secretary Sue Lor-uthai said he would have "only" 25 million baht to run a government email setup, a figure that must have IT employees nationwide drooling, but the permanent secretary insisted he would have to drop service to 200,000 of the 300,000 users.

The Legal Execution Department slammed the door on plans by your TOT to take over as policymaker of the upcountry telephone firm TT&T; the department and creditors with 74 percent of TT&T debt rejected TOT and picked specialist firm P Planner to be responsible for organising the debt rehabilitation plan during the protected bankruptcy; but both TT&T and TOT were incensed, and plan to challenge the decision in the Central Bankruptcy Court; the CEO of P Planner, it turned out, is Pisit Lee-ahtam, a former CEO of TT&T, who will get 2 to 5 million baht a month while trying to lead the firm out of massive debt totalling more than 26 billion baht; at TT&T's parent firm, Jasmine International took down the TT&T nameplate and replaced it with Triple T Broadband; creditors have charged that Jasmine is sucking the remaining assets from TT&T.

The board of your CAT Telecom stared reality in the face; what would happen, asked chairman Natti Premrasamee, if the whole concessions thing (aka skimming) wasn't there to prop up CAT with money it didn't have to work for?; And he instructed management to start work now on contingency plans for just such a thing; CAT has never had competition since it came into existence, but reaps huge payments from private firms - particularly DTAC and True Move - which use CAT as a nominee for their services. Your CAT Telecom board decided it was time to try again to pick a new president, short-listed from a current candidates' list of seven; a selection committee under Thaneerat Siripachana, deputy permanent secretary for the Information and Communications Technology ministry, could pick a winner as early as the end of August.

Suddenly optimistic industry executives say the hard-disk business rebounded in the second quarter, although there is still a long way to go; Kattiya Kraikan, chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries' electronic and electrical industries club, said production has risen consistently since February, and demand from manufacturers has picked up; in all though, it's a grim picture - exports this year are likely to be off by more than 10 percent compared with 2008; the good news is that electronics overall is twice as bad.

Yuppiephone peddlers Jay Mart announced plans to sell 75 million shares in its first initial public offering; the IPO hopes to get somewhere around 1.7 baht per share and result in a listing on the Stock Exchange of Thailand before the end of the year. No 1 yuppiephone network Advanced Info Service of Shingapore arranged for 3-baht discounts for Chao Phraya Express Boat riders who merely show their AIS phone to the booth lady to get the regular 13-baht tickets for orange-flagged express boats for 10 baht, and the 18-baht tickets on yellow-flagged boats for 15 baht - until the end of the year.

Advanced Info Service of Shingapore put the first yuppiephone base station in Thailand on wind power; AIS president Wichian Mektrakarn travelled to Pattaya to make a "Watson, come here" call to inaugurate the Green Network service which will end global warming; the first wind-powered base station needs average winds of 21.6km per hour to generate 5 kilowatts of electricity during a 24-hour day; the 10-metre fan on the 20-metre pole has backup electricity from standard sources for those calm days.