"They are listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand and they have to come under a different set of rules," the minister said yesterday.

Among state enterprises that underwent a change in directors is the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat), for which the Cabinet approved a new board on Tuesday.

"We need to change as the old board did not include representatives from related agencies as it was expected to," he said, adding that he has not yet assigned any special policies to the new board.

The boards of many state enterprises, appointed during the Thaksin government, have recently resigned to pave the way for the new government to appoint their own choices.

The new Egat board is chaired by Energy Ministry permanent secretary Pornchai Rujiprapha.

Others include the permanent secretaries of the Foreign and Interior ministries, and a representative from the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry.

Piyasvasti also said it was necessary for Egat to revise its capacity after 2010. He said the Cabinet resolution to have Egat maintain half the national power-production capacity may need to be revised.

"That Egat needs to control

half the capacity for security reasons has been said for a long time,

before we started to buy power

from independent producers or

small independent producers,

but since we started buying from

private producers we have never suffered any security problem," the minister said.

Energy Reporters

The Nation