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

Aug 14, 2026

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PM Freezes Permits With 4M Guns Off the Books

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul suspended all new firearm purchase permits and gave the Interior Ministry 60 days to write tougher gun-control amendments, four days after a 14-year-old shot his grandparents and seven others at Debsirin Nonthaburi School with his grandfather's legally registered handgun. The order also stops the "welfare gun" scheme that let civil servants, soldiers and police buy discounted firearms, a program gun-control advocates blame for feeding a resale market authorities have never tracked. Carry permits haven’t been issued since February, and Anutin is now extending the freeze to purchases and pending applications. Deputy Prime Minister Pakorn Nilprapunt wants a real-time tracking system for imports, sales and ownership, with proposed amendments open for public comment through September 10. Maybe the bigger problem for those who want to control the trade is that roughly 4 million of the country's 10.3 million civilian firearms are unregistered.

Read more: Nation Thailand (amnesty), BBC (screening), The Guardian (cremations), Yahoo News (ownership), NBC News (penalties)

Ex-Bhumjaithai MP Kills Council Chairman

Chalong Riewrang, once a lawmaker in Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul's Bhumjaithai party, shot Thongchai Yenprasert, the 71-year-old chairman of Nonthaburi's Provincial Administrative Organisation, to death inside a local government office. Police say the proximate cause was borrowed money. Thongchai, a former police colonel, died at Phra Nang Klao Hospital after being shot in the neck; his driver was wounded in the arm and hand. Immediately after the shooting, Chalong called into a political YouTube livestream to give his version, saying Thongchai pulled a gun first as he was driving away. "I fired," he told reporters later in custody. Anutin, sounding keen to show the freeze is not only theater, promised legal action "without exception."

Read more: ABC (gun control), NBC News (school safety)

Bangkok Says Cobra Gold Isn’t a Trade Chip

Elbridge Colby got Government House and a promise from Prime Minister Anutin, who told the US under secretary of defense for policy that Bangkok will not tie its 193-year military alliance to discussions on tariffs. Bloomberg had reported that officials were considering that, floating Cobra Gold against Washington's 12.5% Section 301 levy on most Thai exports. Washington says the levy is intended to tame a trade surplus of $51.4 billion (2025). The Defense Ministry rejected the idea, and Rear Adm Surasunt Kongsiri confirmed that Cobra Gold would go ahead under its original plan, the exercise's 46th year, with 31 participating countries.

Read more: Khaosod English (Anutin), Khaosod English (Falcon Strike), Khaosod English (Surasunt), Asian News Network (tariffs)

BKK, Phnom Penh Near Pick for Gulf Panel Chair

Four conciliators, two each from Bangkok and Phnom Penh, are expected to name the chair of their UNCLOS panel today, as they pick from nearly a dozen candidates from around the world. Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Bangkok put forward six preferred names. The panel's first meeting is expected around September. The Hague, Paris, Singapore and Vietnam are all in the running as hosts. The process is being undertaken because of Cambodia's decision to trigger compulsory conciliation after Bangkok scrapped the 2001 MOU governing the Overlapping Claims Area. Bangkok accepted the proceedings even as it said that bilateral talks hadn’t run their course yet. Whatever the commission recommends, its not going to bind either government to a maritime border.

KSL Bets Cassava Will Pull Farmers Off Cane

Khon Kaen Sugar Industry, the country's third-largest sugar exporter, expects a coming super El Nino to reduce national cane output a little to about 100 million tonnes, down from 106 million tonnes last season, as some farmers switch to higher-priced cassava. President Chalush Chinthammit says rainfall is due to stop within two weeks, after which planting will start in the country's 11-12 million rai of cane fields. KSL forecasts global sugar prices near 17 cents a pound in 2027, up about 6% from the current 16 cents, because Brazil is using more cane for ethanol and India is expected to keep an export ban in place.

AG Clears One Tycoon as AMLO Takes Another's Assets

Tantai Narongkoon, CEO of Titan Capital Group Holdings, landed in Bangkok to face arrest warrants but walked out a few hours later a free man, after the Attorney-General issued a final order not to prosecute him in a case alleging more than 4.5 billion baht in losses tied to a pirated-film website that heavily featured ads for online gambling. DSI investigators had recommended charges. Prosecutors declined to indict, the DSI director-general pushed back, and the Attorney-General settled it in Tantai's favor. The Attorney-General’s office has offered no public reasoning for declining to prosecute Tantai. In a different case, AMLO's transaction committee moved to seize another 115 million baht in cash, gold, land and digital assets from Chen Zhi, the Prince Group founder awaiting trial in China on fraud. Chinese authorities plan to add “intentional-injury charges” which could result in a death sentence. Total seizures against Chen are 460 million baht.

Read more: Nation Thailand (suspect numbers), Bangkok Post (asset breakdown)

ThaiBev Profits Rise as It Shops KFC Around

Thai Beverage posted nine-month EBITDA of 48.29 billion baht, or $1.46 billion, up 7.2% on Chang beer and Sangsom rum as it works with Bank of America to weigh buyer interest for its local KFC franchise. No indicative price has been made public. Three other bellwethers logged their own gains this earnings season, with Indorama Ventures posting EBITDA growth of about three-fifths in the first half, CPN's core profit rising almost a fifth on record mall rental income, and Airports of Thailand reported a quarterly profit of 4.41 billion baht.

Read more: Bangkok Post (KFC sale), Thai Enquirer (Indorama EBITDA), Thai Enquirer (CPN mall income), TradingView (AOT profit)

Power Bills Drop as Streetlights Leave the Tab

The Energy Regulatory Commission has approved a new tariff that removes public streetlight costs from household bills and caps the first 200 units (kW/h) of monthly use at 3 baht each, effective September 1. The average charge will drop to 3.86 baht per unit from 3.95 baht, and the lower rate will be in place through at least December. Consumer confidence found a four-month high of 51.8 in July.

Read more: Bangkok Post (minister quotes)

Diesel Discount Gets a Sixth Extension

EPAC extended a 2.40-baht-per-liter ex-refinery diesel discount for another 31 days, through September 15, using 4.475 billion baht from refiners' excess gains to fund the deal. This extension is round six, and total handouts are estimated to be 17.422 billion baht. Refiners banked 9.735 billion baht in July; after the current draw and 2.815 billion baht spent on an earlier discount round, about 2.445 billion baht is left for whatever comes next.

Bangkok Offers 3,000 Baht for Domestic Travel

Tourism and Sports Minister Surasak Phancharoenworakul is pitching two schemes, a foreign visitor fee to seed a new tourism promotion fund and a 1.75 billion baht domestic subsidy called Thai Travel Thai Plus. The subsidy would cover half of eligible accommodation costs (limited to 3,000 baht per entitlement), with 500,000 entitlements going out first-come, first-served through Krungthai Bank's Pao Tang app. Each person will be able to claim up to five entitlements. Cabinet is expected to decide by August 31 for an October 1 launch. The foreign fee has no rate, no collection method and no start date, only a pitch to fund attractions, pay for visitor insurance and environmental restoration. Domestic tourism revenue was down 4% in the first five months of this year.

Read more: Nation Thailand (fee pitch), The Thaiger (revenue forecast), Outlook Traveller (launch timing), Travel + Leisure Asia (voucher plan)

NBTC Hangs Up on Unverified SIMs

Miss the August 30 cutoff and your phone might still ring, but it will not dial out. The NBTC's push targets mule accounts and mismatched registrations, like kids who might be using a parent's SIM. The plan should introduce just enough friction to force a trip to customer service in order to get laggards properly registered.

Citizenship Fraud Flagged at Eight Hospitals

Authorities have identified as many as 1,500 suspected citizenship fraud cases in eight Bangkok hospitals, in a scheme that worked by fiddling with birth registration documents. No arrests have been announced so far.

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