IT takes ages, decades in fact, for major projects to be completed in Thailand. Suvarnabhumi airport was first proposed in 1960 but didn’t open until 46 years later. Laem Chabang port took 30 years to build and work on various rail projects hasn’t even begun 20 years after their initiation. How different from a condominium project now being built on Sukhumvit, where work forges ahead very noisily up to 12 hours, seven days a week, admittedly much to the annoyance of neighbours. Consequently, this place is going up faster than a helicopter.
What separates these examples, apart from the size, of course, is that the former three are government projects while the latter is a private investment controlled by a single entity. Government projects are notoriously slow for many reasons, including changes in ministers and key members of the civil service, with each working out ways to extract their share of the booty, without stepping on each other’s interests. It’s an inefficient system involving too many people and too many hurdles.
And until Thailand gets a strong leader who can override such obstacles and clamp down on the corruption that invariably infiltrates major projects, the pace of development here will fall well below what’s needed to turn this country into a modern economic power.
What separates these examples, apart from the size, of course, is that the former three are government projects while the latter is a private investment controlled by a single entity. Government projects are notoriously slow for many reasons, including changes in ministers and key members of the civil service, with each working out ways to extract their share of the booty, without stepping on each other’s interests. It’s an inefficient system involving too many people and too many hurdles.
And until Thailand gets a strong leader who can override such obstacles and clamp down on the corruption that invariably infiltrates major projects, the pace of development here will fall well below what’s needed to turn this country into a modern economic power.
