Outraged taxpayer, Cock and Bull ("Tragedy' of sale might have been exaggerated for profit", January 24) and other letter writers should be aware that major developed countries intercept international telephone and data traffic to extract military, criminal and commercial information. The effort involves thousands of people in each of these countries. From Thailand's perspective, internal government communications will be particularly at risk. In this region it is known that Singapore operates one of the most sophisticated interception and analysis facilities. Most underdeveloped countries are well advised to keep their telecommunications infrastructures under their own control simply to delay and to deepen the difficulty for the intercepting countries, until they have adequately protected all government and military communications. This is a very expensive task.

While Thaksin may not have appreciated the threat, the Singapore intelligence and its intelligence partners will not have been displeased.

Now that the cat is out of the bag it may be necessary for Thailand to completely rethink the security of government and military telecommunications.

Robert Deverell

FDS Networks Thailand

Bangkok

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Clearer investment rules might send FDI elsewhere

Now that the foreign chambers of commerce have retreated to lick their wounds, representatives of the local business community are coming out to congratulate themselves on the changes to the Foreign Business Act that were recently approved by the Cabinet. The amendments are being heralded as an altruistic effort to clarify the law that will be highly beneficial to foreign investors. Some are so exuberant as to assert that the amendments will actually increase foreign investment in Thailand.

I agree entirely that many foreign investors will, indeed, be grateful for the clarification because it will greatly simplify their decision-making process. Previously, many foreign investors had to spend many hours pouring over complex shareholding structures proposed by Thai lawyers, worrying about whether these schemes would adequately protect their ownership and management control of their businesses, as well as their intellectual property. Now the decision is suddenly made crystal clear. They can save on legal fees and move on to faster growing Asian markets that welcome foreign investors with open arms.

Nick Fogarty

Bangkok

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M'sia offers a case study in why capital controls don't work

I beg to differ with Bank of Thailand Governor Dr Tarisa Watanagase's recent comparison of Thailand's capital controls with those of Malaysia. Malaysia emerged from the Asian crisis in better shape than Thailand not because it implemented the capital controls that it imposed in September 1998 but because it entered the crisis in much better shape in the first place. Malaysia suffered from a crisis of excessive local currency, corporate debt and contagion effects from Thailand, Korea and Indonesia but its short-term foreign debt burden was quite manageable and much less than its net international reserves. This was in sharp contrast to Thailand, which entered the crisis with short-term foreign debt obligations well in excess of net international reserves - that were rapidly frittered away almost to zero by the Bank of Thailand's futile defence of the baht. Consequently, Thailand had no choice other than to call in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after its appeal to China and Japan for an Asian bail-out on easy terms was rejected. By this point it was far too late to consider capital controls as the horse had figuratively already bolted. Due it is more prudent economic management, Malaysia had no need either to call in the IMF or introduce capital controls. The capital controls were introduced by Mahathir Mohammad when the Asian crisis was practically over. The move provided an excuse to remove his finance minister, Anwar Ibrahim.

The removal of Anwar and the nationalistic illusion created that Mahathir had solved a crisis by beating off foreign invaders made it much easier for Mahathir to use public funds to bail out his cronies and shore up his personal power base.

Malaysia's capital controls resulted in Malaysia being removed from the global stock market benchmark, the MSCI Index, and killed off foreign interest in the stock market for five years. This was a high price for the country to pay to peg its currency at a level that it would have found anyway due the strength of Malaysia's fundamentals.

Markus Jensen

Hong Kong

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General Electric not involved in airport-scanner affair

Re: "Airport's legacy of corruption lingers", Editorial, January 24.

Please allow me to correct the statement that "GE InVision-Technologies, which manufactured the new airport's luggage scanners, admitted to the US Justice Department that its representatives might have violated the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by offering bribes to Thai government officials".

Since this is a serious allegation I would like to clarify that GE, at no time, did anything improper or admitted any improper practice by its employees to the US Justice Department.

GE was not involved in the original deal to sell the equipment in question. This contract was secured by Invision Techologies - a company in which GE had no equity or management involvement. About a year after the Suvarnabhumi deal was secured, GE acquired Invision Technologies, and as a result "inherited" the contract to supply the equipment.

As part of the acquisition process, due diligence was conducted and GE became aware of some potential issues. GE was the party that initiated the action that forced the sales agreement to be unwound and that compelled InVision Technologies to notify the US government authorities. GE only acquired InVision Technologies after the owners of InVision Technologies settled with the Department of Justice on the issues.

GE's refusal to acquire a company while any doubts existed on the transparency of a transaction and its readiness to unwind a questionable transaction are consistent  with the company's rigorous integrity policies.

Since GE was one of the prime movers who brought to light the questionable transaction, it makes it doubly painful when there are suggestions that we may have been party to a questionable transaction.

Stuart L Dean

President, General Electric Southeast Asia

Kuala Lumpur

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Editor's Note: The Nation apologises for the error made in the editorial.

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Investigate airport cracks using basic engineering theory

Re: "Airport's legacy of corruption lingers", Editorial, January 24.

As an engineer, I find this debate over the cracks in the runway at the new airport, and the ongoing investigation into these cracks, a bit of a farce.

You get any competent engineering firm that has a soil scientist and a laboratory and do the following:

Cut out three three-metre square sections of pavement at three questionable areas. Check the cross section of these cut outs for compliance with regulations and contractual specifications. This would take one hour.

Take a compaction test of the soil directly beneath the cut outs. This would take 20 minutes.

Do a analysis of the surface soil for maximum compactability and the material's compliance to required compaction. This would take two to three hours.

Take coring samples down to 15 metres to determine if there is an appropriate base layer, compaction at various depths, and permeability. This would take three to five days.

Do a percolation test at all three locations. This would take one week. 

The total time required to determine what is going on with the runways and taxiways, and what will be required to repair them, would be less than two weeks.

This is standard procedure done worldwide when building any commercial highway or any other load or traffic-bearing structure. The cracks issue has been raised since before the airport was opened. The entire thing can be resolved in very short order. The only possible reason why standard engineering methodology has not already been applied is that some person or persons with the ability to obstruct the analysis already knows what the test results would be.

Thai Exodus

Bangkok

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Declare Map Ta Phut a pollution-control zone

Re: "Action urged over pollution", Business, January 23.

In response to the recent decision by the National Environmental Board (NEB) to delay the decision declaring Map Ta Phut a pollution-control zone, Greenpeace issued the following statement:

The recent decision by the National Environmental Board (NEB) to delay the decision declaring Map Ta Phut a pollution-control zone is disgraceful.

Declaring Map Ta Phut a pollution-control zone is a necessary first step towards addressing and ultimately eliminating the grave problem of toxic pollution now threatening the lives of people and neighbouring communities around the industrial estate. With this declaration, the government can start implementing the serious task of auditing all toxic releases coming from the estate, and in the process identify the biggest contributors to pollution loading in the area.

Polluters should be required to drastically reduce and eventually eliminate pollution coming from their facilities. Greenpeace believes that the real and lasting solution to the pollution problem in Map Ta Phut and in other polluted areas in the country, lies in the government's and industry's adoption of clean production programmes that will encourage and require companies to phase out the use of toxic substances and bring in the use of safer substitutes in their production processes. Pending that, the government must stop the expansion of major polluting industries in the area, such as proposed coal power plants and petrochemical industries.

However, by continuing to advance the interests of polluting industries in the area, the government has shamelessly sacrificed the health and welfare of thousands of residents in the affected communities in exchange for the profit margins of corporations.

Greenpeace Southeast Asia

Bangkok