Club chairman Manapol Poosomboon said the fair will create an opportunity for new Thai manufacturers to come up with a large diversity of new designs and styles. It will also provide an opportunity for international companies to showcase their products, including designs for upholstered furniture.

The doors of the fair will open tomorrow at Impact, Muangthong Thani. The event will end on Sunday.

A fair for the elders

A health and lifestyle fair for the elderly will be held at Impact Arena from June 28 to July 1.

Last year's event drew more than 48,000 visitors. This year the "Smart and Happy 50-Up Fair" will be supported by the Japanese government to mark the 120th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and Thailand.

Resort for Cambodia

CVI Resort of Malaysia plans to invest about US$100 million (Bt3.54 billion) to build a five-star hotel, a golf course, an international information centre, stadium, entertainment centre, commercial centre and supermarket on 130 hectares of land in Svay Rieng province, on the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, according to Srey Thamarong, an adviser to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The adviser is quoted by the Chinese Xinhua News Agency as saying the hotel will have 450 rooms and the golf course 18 holes, with nine in Cambodia and the other nine in Vietnam.

The Cambodian prime minister is said to be keen on developing his country's border areas into complex zones including industry, tourism projects and economic and trade facilities in order to bring peace and security to those areas.

He expects the CVI Resort plan to develop into a tourist spot that both Cambodians and Vietnamese can enter without a visa.

Hun Sen reportedly hopes there will be similar plans for developing the Thai-Cambodian and Lao-Cambodian border areas.

Oil and gas in Burma

South Korea's Daewoo International will explore for oil and natural gas in another block off the shore of Burma's western Rakhine state, reports The New Light of Myanmar newspaper.

Daewoo has signed a production-sharing contract with Burma's state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise for exploration and production in Block AD-7 off the Burmese coast.

The company discovered gas deposits in two other blocks off the Rakhine coast in 2004 and 2005.

Daewoo has a 60 per cent stake in the consortium undertaking the exploration. The others involved are South Korea Gas (10 per cent), ONGC Videsh of India (20 per cent) and the Gas Authority of India (10 per cent).

Burmese figures show that in the fiscal year that ended in March 2006, the country produced 7.962 million barrels of crude oil and 11.45 billion cubic metres of gas. Gas exports during the year reached 9.138 billion cubic metres, earning more than US$1 billion.

Foreign investment in Burma's oil and gas sector reached about $2.635 billion at the end of the 2005-06 fiscal year, since the country opened to foreign investment in late 1988.

VN cement output

Vietnam's domestic supply of cement is forecast to reach about 60 million tonnes in 2010, about 10 million tonnes more than local demand, reports the Vietnam Investment Review.

State-owned Vietnam National Cement, which currently holds a 43-per-cent share of the domestic market, says local demand for cement demand should grow by around 10.5 per cent or 11.5 per cent per year from 32.5 million tonnes in 2006 to around 50 million tonnes in 2010.

The corporation, which produced 13.6 million tonnes of cement last year, will make a priority of investing in five new cement projects to produce an additional 10 million tonnes.