Summary of AMCHAM Business Today Video Conference for April 22

Summary

Cabinet Resolutions

The ban on sale of alcohol beverages has been extended until the end of the month (April 30) to discourage further social gatherings.
The Prime Minister has reached out to 20 multi-billionaires of Thailand to request for cooperation in the fight to defeat the coronavirus. He mentioned the government will not accept cash donations but seek projects to help those most at risk and facing hardship.
Although there has been criticism for the lack of testing, the Ministry of Public Health announced that Thailand has only a quarter of the mortality at 1.7% if compared to the global average of 6.4%.
Starting this week, Thai law has allowed board meetings and shareholders meetings to take place entirely via electronic means, and participants are no longer required to be in Thailand.
All foreigners have been granted automatic visa extension for another 3 months until July 31, which has just been approved by the Thai Cabinet.
TAT has estimated that Thailand will end the year with just over 16 million international tourists, far below the 40 million goal. However, they have stated that tourism activities in Thailand could resume as early as May.

Reduction in Internet Bandwidth

Members have expressed that they noticed a dip in the speed of their internet connection both at work and home Wi-Fi in the past few weeks and it can turn out to be quite a hassle especially for people relying on the web to get their task done.
One of the presumed reasons for this is that with a larger count of the working force at home, they would have to depend on the internet for communications that would typically be done in the office, so there could be an overload on the service providers’ systems.
In addition to that, schools are now all hosting online classes and offering remote learning platforms that could make the issue seem even more prominent.

Business Continuity Planning

As reported in our poll result, members remain vastly positive toward the measures taken by the Thai government to curb the spread of covid-19, but one area that was brought up saying the government could do more on was payment for employees by offering businesses a percentage of employee wages to keep the business running for instance.
An AMCHAM member company implemented a simple program by sending their employees basic exercise equipment and blocking a short time in the evening to work out. This encourages people to get up and move around in their own space, while still sticking to social distancing guidelines.
Another member has mentioned they are planning for their company to go back to normal business in early May for multiple branches in the upcountry, but the headquarter in Bangkok would possibly resume only around June.
In order to ensure that the transition back to working in the office is smooth, they are labelling employees into different groups of which to return first, introducing stringent measures to keep their employees safe including work shifts, social distancing practices, hygiene protocols and the request to always have a mask on in the office.

Thailand and Rapid Test Kits

For most countries in South-east Asia, rapid testing of covid-19 has been made available for the general public by using blood from the fingertips or secretion from the nose with results in mere 15 minutes.
However, in Thailand, there has yet to be an approval for any rapid test kits for the public. One brand of rapid test kit made it through the Thai FDA, but it is limited to usage only in hospitals to test healthcare workers who had a history of close contact with Covid-19 patients.
The only option for ordinary citizens is to take a PCR test which requires 24 hours for the results to come out.
Given that local testing remains inadequate in Thailand, AMCHAM’s health members suggest that risk should be benchmark off the overall global infection rate rather than local information and reports.