The move came during a meeting between Commerce Ministry permanent secretary Siripol Yodmuangcharoen and assistant US trade representative Barbara Wiesel in Washington last week.

Siripol said he tried to convince the US to upgrade Thailand 's trade status as the country had shown better results on IPR violation compared with other countries.

"The country's IPR violation statistics have decreased significantly during the past few years, and hence Thailand should be upgraded from the watch list," he said.

The US earlier this year kept Thailand on its "priority watch list" in its annual review of countries under its Special 301 measure. Siripol also denied accusations made earlier in an International Labour Organisation report that Thai fish farms and food-processing factories used child labour.

He explained that the government had surveyed all shrimp and food factories and found them to be hiring legal labourers.

To solve the prolonged conflict over Thai shrimp exports to the US, the two countries will soon have an unofficial meeting to end the continuous bond collection from Thai shrimp firms.

Thailand has won the case over the US's unfair imposition of anti-dumping duty and the continuous-bond payments in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). However, the US has appealed to the WTO and still imposes high tariffs on Thai shrimp imports.

Siripol said the ministry would try to convince the US to withdraw its requirement for a 100-per-cent bank guarantee before the final ruling in order to help decrease the high burden on Thai shrimp exporters from paying the guarantee.

By Petchanet Pratruangkrai

The Nation

Published on June 17, 2008

Source: www.nationmultimedia.com