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ResourcesThailand Real Estate & Property LawJurisprudenceDoes the Thai Government Only Know How to Create "Fees"?

Does the Thai Government Only Know How to Create "Fees"?

Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "does the government only know how to create fees?" This is actually kind of a funnier video to my mind because when I was reading, I was like "wow you guys have been sitting in a Government Office and this is what you all came up with!"

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Bangkok motorists may face congestion fee, again bangkokpost.com. Quoting directly: "The Transport Ministry will spend 6 months to a year studying the feasibility of imposing a congestion fee on motorists using busy roads in Bangkok said Minister Suriya Jungrungreangkit. The fee will go toward a 200-billion-baht fund to buy back concessions from private companies that invest in electric train lines. Once back under state control, the Government will be able to offer affordable fares."

Yeah, once back under state control all types of amazing things always happen. Quoting further: "Mr Suriya said on Tuesday the congestion fee will realize his vision of capping electric train fares at 20 Baht per trip across all lines." Again, nothing Communistic about that. I can't see how that could go wrong, but yeah let's take away the price discovery functions from the market and see how that works out for everybody. But meanwhile we're going to impose a fee on all the people using cars just because they use cars. This is all silliness. I have to be honest with you. I read this and I was just sitting there going "wow this is a perfect example of what Ronald Reagan said when he said: "the worst things you can hear in the English language are 'we're from the Government and we're here to help.'" This is not going to help anybody. This looks, again I have to wonder if there's some World Economic Forum thinking behind this. It seems very socialistic at the least. It seems a lot like Communism, this pie in the sky notion that we're going to get down to 20-baht fares for everybody on the train line.

Meanwhile do people understand why these private corporations invested money to build these trains? It was to get the fares out of them after they were built. Again, I'm not saying that there might not be problems with affordability with regard to the trains. What to do about that I'm not entirely sure. But I fail to really understand the logic-chain behind the notion that "okay the trains are too expensive, let's tax the heck out of all the folks driving cars, then use that money to buy back the trains and let everybody then go down to a 20-baht fee." That just sounds like pie in the sky, sort of again something that you would see the Soviets come up with in like 1986. It just seems like that kind of idea to me and again I really have to ask the question, I don't remember seeing any of this kind of talk over the decade under the old Government. Now say what you will about them and I understand there's a lot to be said but I don't remember all of this nonsense of "hey we're going to put a tax on you because you drive a car", because that's what this fundamentally is. Hey, you've got a car, we're going to put a tax on you. I don't know where they get the justification for that, they just say they have it, and then we're going to use the money to buy back the trains from the people that built them. By the way, I imagine this would be a forcible buyback, it's not as if the folks that built those trains or helped - I know it was sort of a public/private thing - but put in the money, put in the capital and then built that thing up. I'm not sure that they're going to be really cheerful about just selling it off - I am sure at some probably not market price - in order to then apply a cap on all folks using the train. Again, these are very sort of Socialistic to the point of nearly Communistic type notions. I really hope maybe folks looking at this, maybe cooler head sort of prevail regarding ideas like this here in the Kingdom of Thailand.