Thai Prime Minister General Surayud Chulanont will pay a goodwill visit to Myanmar in the near future, an official announcement said here Monday without disclosing the date of his visit.

It will be Surayud's first visit to Myanmar since he assumed the post of prime minister after a military coup on Sept. 19 by Thai Army Commander-in-Chief General Sonthi Boonyaratkalin ousting former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

Surayud is expected to meet Chairman of the Myanmar State Peace and Development Council Senior-General Than Shwe and hold discussions with his Myanmar counterpart General Soe Win at the new capital of Nay Pyi Taw.

The bilateral ties between Myanmar and Thailand including economic and trade cooperation has maintained good momentum in recent years.

According to Myanmar official statistics, Thailand stands as Myanmar's largest trading partner with their bilateral trade including the border trade amounting to 1.594 billion U.S. dollars in the fiscal year of 2005-06 ended in March, of which Myanmar's export to Thailand took 1.357 billion dollars, while its import from Thailand represented 237 million dollars. The Myanmar-Thai bilateral trade took up 28.9 percent of Myanmar's total foreign trade of 5.5 billion dollars in 2005-06.

Thailand also stands a major importer of Myanmar's natural gas, buying gas from the Yadana and the Yetagun gas fields in the country's Mottama and Tanintharyi offshore areas respectively.

Thailand has stepped up cooperation with Myanmar in the pressing sectors of energy and power, planning to inject more investment into the country's natural gas and Thanlwin River hydropower projects.

According to Myanmar official statistics, Myanmar absorbed from Thailand a contracted investment of 6,034.4 million dollars in 2005-06, of which 6,030 million dollars will be intended to be injected into a major power project of 7,110-megawatt Ta Sang hydropower plant on the Thanlwin River in southern part of Shan state. The fiscal year's Thai contracted investment has brought Thailand's total investment in Myanmar up to 7.375 billion dollars since Myanmar opened to such investment in late 1988.

The latest Thai investment had sharply raised Myanmar's total contracted foreign investment by about two times from 7.78 billion dollars to 13.84 billion dollars as of March, the end of 2005-06 fiscal year, according to the compiled figures.

Meanwhile, As part of an economic cooperation strategy program of four Mekong countries -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, establishment of a special economic zone in Myanmar's Myawaddy, a border town with Thailand, is underway.

Under the Ayeyawaddy-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) agreed in November 2003, the Myawaddy special economic zone in southeastern Kayin state constitutes one of the three Thai-proposed zones to be set up on the Myanmar-Thai border to mainly attract foreign investment into the projects.

Source: Xinhua