Thai PM Plans to Make Major Tourism Resorts Duty-FreeThai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Saturday that he planned to develop the country's two major tourist resorts, Chiang Mai and Phuket, as duty-free zones, to attract more tourists and increase state revenue, according to local TV reports.Thaksin said on Nation Channel during a highlighted national tourism forum, being held this weekend in the northern resort province of Chiang Mai, 780 kilometers north of Bangkok, that he proposed the idea after studying the shopping behavior of foreign tourists. Over 400 participants from tourism-related public and private sectors, including cabinet members and representatives of tourism businesses, attended the forum between Friday and Saturday, which aimed to seek ways to promote national tourism. Thaksin, who chaired the forum, also said that a sub-committee, headed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), would be set up to seek cooperation from all agencies concerned to explore and develop new tourist sites, namely national parks, sea-bound attractions, and historic places, as well as to improve and upgrade existing tourist destinations. Meanwhile, TAT Governor Pradech Phayakvichien, told the workshop that the Thai tourism industry had steadily grown since 1960, particularly after the introduction of the Visit Thailand Year Project in 1987. Thailand also has outstanding tourist resources with diverse styles of tourist attractions, namely natural-bound, cultural- bound, and historical-bound ones, according to the governor. Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan told the forum that her ministry was going to launch the "Clean Food, Good Taste" project, aimed at encouraging local food houses and restaurants to focus not only on good tastes, but also on food hygiene, to promote production of new healthy items for tourists. |
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