Thailand: Sonthi Vows to Get Satellites Back From Singapore

Excerpt from report in English by Thai newspaper The Nation website on 17 February

Council for National Security chairman General Sonthi Boonyaratglin yesterday [16 February] vowed to regain control of Thai satellites bought by Temasek Holdings, the Singaporean government’s investment arm.

“I am thinking about 140bn baht [4.2bn US dollars] worth of national assets bought [by Singapore] that I want back, particularly the satellites,” he said.

Sonthi made the remark when speaking to a group of 2,000 students under the territorial defence programme, during the launch of a patriotism-awareness campaign.

He asked fellow Thais to reflect on why a small country with no arable land like Singapore could become so wealthy as to be able to afford 140 billion baht for Thai assets.

[passage omitted]

Meanwhile, a source said one option for the government was to amend the law so as to classify satellites as strategic weaponry, which would give the Defence Ministry control of them.

Shin Satellite Plc executives yesterday declined to comment.

Telecom expert Anupap Tiralap said the government could take control of the satellite concessions only if the satellite- operators broke the law by for instance wire-tapping or if their foreign shareholding exceeded the legal limit of 49 per cent.

ShinSat operates the broadcasting satellites Thaicom 1, 2, and 5 and the broadband satellite iPSTAR, all under concessions from the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology.

The company had a market capitalisation of 7.8bn baht [234m US dollars] as of the third quarter last year and total assets of 33.48bn baht [1bn US dollars].

Shin Corp controls 41.34 per cent of ShinSat.

A telecom-industry observer said yesterday that if the government took inappropriate means to retrieve the satellites it would scare away foreign businesses, as they would feel that there was no effective legal protection for their investments.

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