BANGKOK, Feb 22 – Cutting industrial production on April 5 as proposed by the government to minimise power consumption will severely affect the private sector, a leading businessman said today.
Pornsilp Patcharintanakul, deputy chairman of Thai Chamber of Commerce and senior consultant of Charoen Pokphand’s agro industrial and food business group, said the one-day production suspension will negatively impact various parties concerned including employees.
“It should be the last alternative. The government should call on people and households to use less power during the shortage period on April 5-14,” he said.
Mr Pornsilp said the government has been well aware of the maintenance of the natural gas platform in Myanmar and should have worked out preparations to cope with the situation.
The announcement of energy outage on April 5-14 is rather surprising and too imminent, he said. Suspending production of food processing and the operations of frozen food factories will result is losses of raw materials which must be kept at a temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius.
