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Mekong Memo Thailand Weekly: Business, politics, finance, trade & legal news.

Mar 13, 2026

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Headlines:

Cabinet Goes Remote as Hormuz Shuts

Grounded Flights, Empty Beaches

Washington Loads the Tariff Gun

Billion Baht a Day for Diesel

Hormuz Fallout Heads for the Rice Paddies

Anutin's Lucky Thirteen

Scam Purge Nets 150,000 Accounts

SET Opens Doors After Scandals

Radiation Rationing

Battery-Swap Trucks Hit the Highway

Cabinet Goes Remote as Hormuz Shuts

The cabinet put emergency energy measures in place on March 10, set a cap on the pump price of diesel fuel and ordered government agencies to move non-essential staff to work-from-home. Agencies and state enterprises are being told to take advantage of remote work for any roles that won't disrupt public services. Bangkok's government workforce runs with almost 178,000 employees; about 30% of them in non-essential roles that can be done remotely, though transport operators and outdoor advertisers are bracing for the hit. About 84% of crude oil and 83% of LNG passing through Hormuz in 2024 was bound for Asia. Vietnam and the Philippines are making similar moves, using emergency fuel funds and compressing government work weeks.

Grounded Flights, Empty Beaches

Middle East airspace closures have cut the transit routes that carry a third of Europe-Asia traffic, and the beaches are feeling it first. European arrivals dropped roughly 14% in the first nine days of March, with Nordic travelers hit hardest since Gulf carriers like Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad are their primary gateway to Phuket. Tourism officials are modeling three scenarios: the best case means losses of 200,000 visitors and 13.6 billion baht, the worst case results in 600,000 fewer tourists and 40.9 billion baht that doesn’t get spent. The government activated a tourist assistance fund paying stranded visitors up to 2,000 baht daily and waived overstay fines for those whose flights vanished mid-holiday. Marketing budgets are now being redirected to Malaysia, India, and South Korea, as they are short-haul markets that remain unaffected by the flight suspensions. Malaysian arrivals are already up almost 26% week on week.

Washington Loads the Tariff Gun

On March 11, the Trump administration launched Section 301 trade investigations into 16 economies including Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, targeting what Washington calls “excess industrial capacity.” The probe could result in new tariffs by summer, using the same legal tool that kicked off the US-China trade war. Investigators will look for signs of structural oversupply like large trade surpluses or underused factories. A separate forced labor investigation into what’s happening in more than 60 countries was also kicked off on March 12.

Billion Baht a Day for Diesel

The state-managed Oil Fuel Fund is burning through more than a billion baht daily to keep the price of diesel at the pump to 29.94 baht per liter through March 17, hiding a subsidy of almost 17 baht per liter. Accumulated losses are expected to hit around 10 billion baht by March 18. Gross refining margins have tripled in 10 days, from 2 baht to 6 baht per litre, meaning taxpayers are covering windfall profits for refineries. The Democrats are pushing the government to divert excess refining profits into the fund - that would be an echo of what was done in a 2022 measure that pressured refineries to pay in to the fund from windfalls after the Russia-Ukraine war sent margins soaring.

Read more: Bangkok Post (Democrat proposal), Bangkok Post

Hormuz Fallout Heads for the Rice Paddies

While energy is the story that gets most of the headlines, Thailand also depends on fertilizer imports from the Gulf. Most urea and phosphates come shipped in from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, and planting season starts in weeks. Higher input costs could reignite food inflation at an inopportune time. War-related fertilizer bottlenecks are expected to be more severe and arrive faster than farmers are likely able to adjust. If urea prices spike the way they did after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rice farmers already carrying heavy debt loads are going to be facing another season of shrinking margins.

Anutin's Lucky Thirteen

A 13-party coalition commanding 291 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives is enough for Anutin Charnvirakul to (re-)claim the prime ministerial slot after last month’s general election. Bhumjaithai won 191 seats to lead the pack, the opposition People's Party picked up 120 and former coalition partner Pheu Thai nabbed 74. Parliament will convene March 14 for its opening ceremony, with the first working session on March 15 to select a house speaker before moving to the PM confirmation vote. Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai will jointly nominate candidates for speaker and two deputy speakers.

Scam Purge Nets 150,000 Accounts

Thai police, the FBI, and Meta finished their second Joint Disruption Week in Bangkok, taking down more than 150,000 accounts tied to organized fraud networks and arresting 21 suspects. Investigators traced one network back to scam centers that had trafficked more than 300 Thai nationals into border compounds to work the phones. The December operation only resulted in 59,000 account shutdowns, so the jump in scale seems to be saying something about how fast these syndicates are industrializing. Police say they are now sharing intelligence with agencies from 10 countries.

SET Opens Doors After Scandals

The Stock Exchange of Thailand is pitching fast-track listings for tech firms, letting data centers and EV companies go public based on their potential rather than their profits. The exchange is also talking up AI-powered surveillance that they say will be able to catch insider trading and better detect market manipulation, a pitch that they are surely desperate to have land in the wake of the Stark Corp, More Return, and JKN Global scandals that have torched investor confidence. SET chairman Kitipong Urapeepatanapong suggested the possibility of freezing assets first and asking questions later if fraud gets detected. Many stocks on the SET continue to trade below book value, but whether that’s an opportunity or a trap remains to be seen.

Radiation Rationing

The Public Health Ministry is drafting the country's first Cancer Act after logging an annual tally of 140,000 new cases and 86,000 deaths. The National Cancer Policy Board's first job is figuring out how to more efficiently spread 138 radiotherapy machines between 77 provinces as Bangkok currently is home to more than 50 of them and 33 provinces have none. About 50 of those machines reportedly will need to be replaced within the next four years.

Battery-Swap Trucks Hit the Highway

U Power finished its testing of battery-swapping heavy trucks and has decided that it will put 1,000 units on the road with Whale Logistics starting May. This will be the country's first commercial rollout of the technology. The battery switch-outs take mere minutes, and allow electric semis match diesel rigs for uptime without the charging waits or a need for grid upgrades. Three months of road testing showed the path forward, but scaling up will depend on the build-out of a swap-station network that doesn't exist yet.

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