Honda Automobile (Thailand) is about to double its output by starting production at a second plant, despite gloomy export prospects for next year.

MARKETS & FINANCE
Politics and Cambodia sap SET

Thai shares dropped 3.85% yesterday as investors dumped shares over concerns about domestic political risk and armed conflict along the Cambodian border.

Businesses wary in Cambodia

Thai businesses have put their Cambodian operations on full alert after troops of both countries exchanged gunfire and rocket fire along the border near the disputed Preah Vihear temple, leaving at least one soldier dead.

PROPERTY
Buyers' market forms amid financial slump

The global financial meltdown has opened up a buyers' market for property and turned competitive buyers into forced sellers, says Suchad Chiaranussati, managing director of Real Estate Capital Asia Partners (Recap), an investment fund based in Singapore.

BANKING
GSB to deliver services to hard-to-reach customers

The state-owned Government Savings Bank has launched a new mobile banking programme promising to deliver financial services to their customers' doorsteps.

FINANCE
Tisco shops for fire-sale assets

Tisco Bank wants to buy assets of foreign financial institutions hit by the global financial crisis, said senior executive vice-president Oranuch Apisaksirikul.

Thai real estate 'insulated from crisis'

Thailand's property market is well insulated from the global financial crisis as it is far less dependent on debt than most property markets, said real estate firm CB Richard Ellis Thailand.

Business in Africa
Exciting opportunities in a crisis

The world has been astounded in recent weeks by the impact of the "hamburger crisis" that started with massive mortgage defaults in the United States and has since brought huge financial institutions to their knees.

AVIATION
THAI launches unscheduled sales campaign

Thai Airways International has launched a major sales campaign - unusual for the high season - to halt an expected downturn in traffic demand in the last quarter of this year.

Ministers clash over rice-buying schemes

The government yesterday failed to determine the pledging prices for its paddy buying programme for the main 2008-09 crop as the ministers involved remain at odds.

COSMETICS
Shiseido takes back ZA brand in bid to revive sales

Shiseido (Thailand) Co has brought the ZA cosmetic brand, previously handled by a joint venture with Saha Group, back under its own marketing umbrella in a bid to revive growth.

MARKETS
Kapook.com operator heads for MAI for more capital

Bandit Center, the owner of the popular Thai-language internet portal Kapook.com, will list on the Market for Alternative Investment in 2009.

IN Brief
PTT buyback

ENERGY PTT Plc plans to buy back shares in the stock market after prices have tumbled, president Prasert Bunsumpun said yesterday.