It’s been known and occassionally reported on that laborers are enslaved on fish trawlers in Thailand for a couple of years already. But this is the first time I really read about it in-depth, Patrick Winn has published several articles under the title “Seafood Slavery”.

It’s not just Thailand – even the developed nation of New Zealand with their claims of much-lauded environmental efforts to keep waters healthy and fish stocks sustainable has slave labor on fishing tralwers – but that doesn’t make it any better.

It’s mostly Cambodian or Burmese workers who want to work in Thailand. Human smugglers sell them to captains of fish trawlers in Thailand, and once they’re on a trawler, they’re pretty much at the mercy of the caption. Murder is common, working conditions grueling.

There are reports of people working for years without pay – and finally getting killed and thrown over board because the captain can save money that way. It’s the open sea, nobody’s gonna know.

Read more about it:

• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• and here an Infographic
• and here a radio interview with Patrick Winn on Thai seafood slavery

Here’s an article about rental properties and their ROI in BKK:

Rental yields remained largely unchanged in the first quarter of this year in the downtown Bangkok condominium market, ranging from 3% to 9%, despite prices for new properties rising and no significant growth in the number of expatriate tenants.

[...]

Gross yield is the annual rental return compared to the capital value of the property before deducting operating costs and allowing for taxation. The average gross yield of letting transactions was 6% in the first quarter, but there was a wide range from 3% up to 9%.

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Location is one of the most important drivers of yield. Investors need to understand which locations expatriate tenants prefer. Yields have remained steady in the downtown market, with the most popular expatriate rental areas being Sukhumvit up to Soi 63 (Ekamai), Lumpini and Sathorn.

The downtown rental market is mainly driven by expatriates. Based on our rental transactions in the first quarter of this year, there were virtually no Thai lettings at this market level. Within the expatriate market, certain nationalities have specific preferences in terms of facilities and unit features. Japanese tenants are by far the largest expatriate tenant market, making up 30% of CBRE’s transactions, followed by Americans (15%), Germans (13%) and Australians (8%).

In terms of unit type, some of the best yields that have been achieved recently are in new one-bedroom units that are well furnished and located right next to skytrain stations on Sukhumvit. But this trend may not continue as the supply of new one-bedroom units will grow significantly over the next two years.

The survey also showed that the most active rental markets are in the two- and three-bedroom sector in the preferred downtown locations. Thirty-nine percent of CBRE’s first-quarter condominium rental deals were for two-bedroom units and 25% for three-bedroom units.

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Vacancy rates in condominium buildings varies. Some buildings have vacancy rates of less than 10% of available units while others, usually older, poorly maintained buildings, more than 50% of available rental units are vacant. There are, however, some older buildings in popular locations where the owners have redecorated their units to make them attractive with well managed and upgraded common areas that continue to attract tenants.

For example, as tenants have a fixed monthly lump-sum budget, some would rather spend their budget on a larger unit in an older building than a small unit in a new building. Let’s take an example of a tenant with a 50,000 baht budget who needs a two-bedroom unit. He may choose a 130 sq m unit in an older building where the unit can be bought at 60,000 baht per sq m, providing investors with a gross yield of 7.7%. Alternatively, the same tenant might choose to spend 50,000 baht on a more modern and better-located unit of, say, 80 sq m. The price of the new unit could be around 100,000 baht per sq m, providing a gross yield of 7.5%.

As sales prices per square metre for older buildings are often 50% lower than in recently completed buildings, investors should not ignore investment opportunities in older but well managed buildings, particularly those with upgraded common areas and units that have been redecorated as these can offer good value to investors.

[...]

all this data is based CBRE’s company’s letting transactions for the last quarter.

Even though the investigations of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) initially didn’t look like they’d actually be able to reveal anything the military didn’t want revealed, they now published a report that states that the army may be responsible for killing at least 25 people during the red shirt protests of 2010 in Bangkok.

Here’s the conclusion the DSI report came to:

• 25 deaths: military
• 12 deaths: red-shirt UDD
• 52 deaths: unknown

You can read the whole story in the Bangkok Post.

A tsunami warning has been issued for provinced along the west-coast of Thailand following a strong earth-quake (8.9 on Richter skala) in Aceh, Indonesia. Al Jazeera has set up a live-blog where you can follow updates.

And the fastest way to get news is of course Twitter (but at the same time lots of unconfirmed rumors and false info, so take it with a grain of salt). As of now, seems’s there no hash-tag yet, but just head over to Twitter and search for tsunami.

While Toshiba is planning to build a new plant (because the old one got damaged during the floods of 2011), this time in a different, less flood-prone location, 32 provinces in Thailand are now suffering from drought.

Meanwhile, the Thai Ministry of Transport is promising free car inspections till April 12. Why? Because they want to reduce the number of accidents on Thailand’s roads during the songkran festival season.

More people die on Thailand’s road during the four-day holiday than during a comparable time-frame in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s a pretty bad statistic, and if you want the concrete numbers, there are here:

During the seven deadly days of Songkran,  last year, road accidents killed 271 people nationwide, down 24.93% compared to 361 deaths in 2010, according to the Road Safety Centre data. However, that is the official count and government officials are notorious for fluffing their counts.

During last year’s celebrations road accidents dropped 8.56% from 3,516 to 3,215 accidents. Also, the number of injuries also dropped by 8.57% or from 3,802 to 3,476 injuries.

The single most common cause of fatalities? Drunk driving.

Apart of that, the Thai Finance Ministry raises its growth forecast to around 5.5% (up from 5% earlier this year) and predicted that interest rates will raise.

Thailand’s finance minister, said [...] the baht should weaken to a range of 32 to 34 a dollar to help exporters. The currency traded at 30.78 today.

However, whether that’s based on plans or wishful thinking is not clear.

And the World Bank has released a report that states that skills shortages have become Thailand’s biggest obstacle to doing business and they’ve published a couple of recommendations on how to improve this situation.

The name Chaleo Yoovidhya probably doesn’t mean much to you. But he’s the original founder of the Red Bull energy drink, together with his Austrian business partner Dietrich Mateschitz.

Born into a poor farmer’s family, he later in life went to work in Bangkok as a bus conductor before he started to get into business. His rise to fortunes reads unlikely, and has all the ingredients of a typical rags-to-riches story. What’s more, despite being Thailand’s third richest man with an estimated fortune of $5 billion, he lived a rather reclusive life and prefered to spend time with his family. Read more about him here.

Thailand’s economy is strongly intertwined with the Chinese economy, and now that the Chinese economy seems to slow down, this has also had an effect on the Thai baht, you can read more about it here.

Four civilians got killed on January 29, 2012 in Southern Thailand (Ban Kayi in tambon Bulo Puyo of Nong Chik district). Now the army admitted that the rangers were at fault. You can read more about this case here, but the positive thing to take away from it is that the army accepted responsibility and admitted being wrong – which wasn’t very common, as many people would argue, just a couple of years ago.

As the death toll of the flood reaches 224 people, Al Jazeera has a video on their website called Thailand hit by worst monsoon in 50 years, which isn’t very informative, but gives you an impression of what it’s currently like in many cities of Thailand.

The Thai government has published several reports on human rights issues in Thailand, including the problems in violent Southern Thailand.

These reports differ drastically from reports published by NGOs. These differences will be discussed at the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday.

Given the widespread inability among Thai officials to admit mistakes, and to take credit for imaginary accomplishments, this isn’t surprising, but it’s nice that someone shines the spotlight on it.

Read more about it:

• Reports on human rights situation clash
• Different accounts given to UN about violence in deep South

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, is shutting down their operations in Bangkok. One of the main reasons is that the government obstructed their work – which is a shame.

If you’ve been in the region where they operate, you’ll see that NGOs are needed there, and MSF is a secular organization, which is nice since many organizations there not just bring help, but also try to find new converts for their own religion, mainly Christianity.

Read more about it on trust.org

The chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau and 18 senior officers are allegedly involved in illegal gambling dens in Bangkok. This in itself isn’t really very surprising. It’s also not very surprising the it was Chuwit who blew the whistle on this. What’s surprising is that there will be an investigation into their (alleged) involvement.

If found guilty, the senior officers will be punished with a 5% salary cut for 3 months. After that, they will receive their full salary again.

In case you’re wondering if there is a typo – no, it’s really just five percent. Considering how much money they (allegedly) might have made from their (alleged) involvement in illegal gambling in Bangkok, this is a joke.

Thailand is still selling more and more jewelry to customers from other countries, despite economic slowdown in the USA & Europe.

The overall jewellery export value is expected to surpass US$12 billion this year.

This includes sales that are made within the country to customers who bring the country out (mostly tourists, specially from Asian countries and Russia) and exports for resale in other countries.

The Thai government also plans to further promote jewelry sales.

The Bangkok police announced what its anti-narcotics operations achieved between August 30-September 12.

• 277 drug addicts were admitted to the rehabilitation program.
• Nearly 4,000 suspects were arrested on drug-related charges.
• The number included 2 major narcotics producers and over 300 dealers.
• Nearly 700 suspects were arrested for illegal possession of drugs and nearly 3,000 users were arrested.
• Nearly 30,000 methamphetamine pills, 11 kilogram of powdered methamphetamine, nearly three kilograms of crystalized methamphetamine and 43 kilograms of cannabis were confiscated.

For a more complete showcase check out this TAN Network article.

Also, it’s worth to remember what drug rehab and drug detention centers in Thailand are like.

The Bangkok airport handled 31.41 million international passengers in the year 2010.

Phuket is one of the fastest growing airports (in terms of number of passengers) of 2010 globally.

More info & international comparison here (PDF-download).

There’s a run on gold these days. So much so that police even enforced stricter security in the “gold store” Yaowarat area. According to Thipa Navawattanasap, the president of YLG Bullion and Futures, local gold prices may even hit 26,000 baht in the short term. Read more about it here.

The new “purple line” of the BTS system in Bangkok is scheduled to open 2014 and will serve north-eastern Bangkok. The estimate costs run into 50bn baht. For more details read: Bangkok Mass Rapid Transit-Purple Line, Bangkok, Thailand

Patrick Winn has authored one of the best in-depth pieces looking at the situation in Southern Thailand. It’s very well worth to set 20 minutes, put the phone off the hook, switch of the TV and digest “Buddhists in Arms”.

Critics of Thaksin often blame him for corruption – and even among his supporters, there are very few that seriously believe he wasn’t corrupt. It’s nonetheless interesting to look at corruption ratings from Thailand before, during and after the Thaksin administration.

There’s no doubt Thaksin was corrupt and used his political power to pocket a lot of money. But more interesting is how much his wrongdoings have been publicized, compared with the relative lack of publication and exposure of the corruption that happened after the coup.