January 2012 Newsletter

Chamber News - Newsletters

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Dear Member:

Happy New Year to you all and I hope you had a relaxing Christmas and New Year break after a very hectic end to 2011. For those of you unfortunate to have suffered from the floods, I hope life is returning to normal for you.

We have a few changes to the Board this year but we have not fully allocated all roles so far and we plan to do this in the coming weeks. In summary, our new Board is as follows:

Nikki Cox – President, Chamber and Embassy liaison
David Mills – Vice President and Communications
Justin Barnett – Vice President
Grant Signal – Business Plan Management
Lisa Anaman – Community Affairs
Joseph Gumbel
Collin Bartlett – Eastern Seaboard Representative and Sponsorship Coordinator
David Old
Douglas Ozanne – Sheraton liaison

I am pleased that David O’Callaghan and. Cris Dunning will remain with the Board as advisors and Julie Littlejohn continues to provide excellent support as our Executive Director. We welcome retaining their experience through 2012.

We are also pleased to welcome Karen Campbell as New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Trade commissioner.

Last year was an incredibly busy year and if January is any indication, 2012 could well be equally busy. . The BOI Fair 2011 which was postponed from November 2011 has been a great success and has proven to be very popular. Associated with the fair was the CEO forum at which Tony Blair was a very good keynote speaker. He made some interesting points. The first was that “Change moves fast but government moves slow” and went on to explain that the role of government was to enable innovation and that England grew by opening up markets which encouraged investment and consequently intellectual knowledge which benefited the country in the long term. Both Tony Blair and another speaker, H.E. Dr. Surin Pitsuwan (Secretary General ASEAN) commented that the development of human capital is essential to growth. Dr. Surin pointed out that with AEC looming in 2015, the working language of ASEAN is English and that Thailand needs to be able to improve English language skills in order to be competitive.

Also as part of the BOI fair, a business delegation from NZ has been visiting Thailand, hosted by the Thai Ambassador in Wellington HE Mr Noppadon. The delegation has been visiting a variety of businesses around Bangkok and attending briefings by BOI in order to better understand business and investment in Thailand.

The Tri-Nations Braii on 16th January at the Sukhothai hotel was well attended and our thanks to Bangkok Bank the NZTCC sponsor for this event for the third year running..

I would like to remind everyone of the up-coming NZI Pasifika Black & White Ball which is being held on Saturday 25th February. Tickets are selling quickly so if you don’t have one yet you had better hurry. Further details are in this newsletter.

Our first Corporate Knight networking evening for 2012 is on Thursday 26th January at the The Breeze, Four Points by Sheraton, Sukhumvit Soi 15. Many thanks to Kevin Fahey of International Project Services (Asia) Ltd this month’s sponsor for their continuing support. We look forward to seeing you all there.

Kind regards,

Nikki Cox
President

Upcoming Chamber Events

Business Networking Event

Venue: Breeze at Four Points by Sheraton
Sukhumvit 15, BTS Asoke
Date: Thursday, 26th January 2012
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Cost: Members Baht 300, Non-members Baht 700

Corporate Sponsor

Food and Venue sponsor:

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT SERVICES (ASIA) LTD

International Quality & Commitment Local Knowledge & Resources

    * Main Contractor
    * Design and Build Services
    * Turnkey Projects

International Project Services (Asia) Ltd is a fully integrated construction company established in the Kingdom of Thailand for over ten years.

Our focus is to deliver quality projects within budget and program, working with the client to achieve their project expectations.

Our Team brings a wealth of knowledge to all areas of construction from the initial concept design through to construction completion and the handover of the project to the operations team.

International Project Services (Asia) Ltd provides these premium services to all our clients, combining International Standards with an extensive working knowledge and understanding of business practices across the Kingdom.

NZI New Zealand Black & White Ball

Saturday 25th February Amari Watergate Hotel
Cocktails from: 6.30pm
Bookings and enquiries to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Price: 3,750B (Members) 3,900B (non Members)

New Zealand's International Rankings

New Zealand's public service is perceived as the least corrupt in the world, according to a new international survey released recently..

New Zealand has nabbed the top spot in the annual Corruption Perceptions Index 2011.

The Index scores countries on a scale from 10 (very clean) to 0 (highly corrupt). New Zealand scored 9.5 out of 10, while Somalia scored 1.

Transparency International New Zealand said New Zealand ranking first in the Index was a testament to the integrity and performance of all of those involved in the public sector.

Results can be viewed at http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/

New Zealand has also ranked highly and beaten out Australia, the United States and Britain in a new survey ranking the most democratic countries in the world.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index ranked New Zealand fifth out of 167 countries surveyed.

Australia came in sixth place, Britain came in 18th and the United States fell from 17th place last year to 19th in this year's survey.

Only Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden were ranked as more democratic countries than New Zealand.

Meanwhile, European countries fell sharply in the rankings amid the spiralling Eurozone economic crisis.

New Zealand's education system has won major praise with it nearing the top in literacy, mathematics and science according to a highly recognised international assessment system.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has issued the figures compiled by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

New Zealand came in near the top of the latest available figures on international reading literacy tests among 15-year-olds.

It showed Korea (with a mean score of 539) and Finland (536) topped the survey of reading literacy among 15-year olds, which for the first time tested students' ability to manage digital information. The next strongest performances were from Hong Kong-China (533), Singapore (526), Canada (524) and New Zealand (521). Japan came in at 520 and Australia 515.

Other Upcoming Events

Feb 9th	ITCC Charity Golf Tournament IRISH AMBASSADOR'S CUP Shotgun 12:30 p.m. Location: The Vintage Club Bangna Trad km 27 Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Feb 25th	NZI Black & White Ball @ Amari Watergate