Bangkok Governor Tells Police to Defend Floodgates From Residents’ Attacks

By Daniel Ten Kate and Anuchit Nguyen - Nov 2, 2011 11:28 AM GMT+0700

Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra ordered police to protect a levee on the city’s outskirts after thousands of people damaged the floodgate, threatening inner parts of the Thai capital.

“The gate needs to be urgently fixed otherwise the floodwater would cause heavy flooding” in eastern Bangkok near industrial estates where international manufacturers are located, he said on his website last night. “There are a number of people who are trying to obstruct the fixing of the floodgate.”

Residents living near Sam Wa canal in northeastern Bangkok destroyed part of a levee so water would flow out of their neighborhood, television images on the Thai PBS television channel showed. The canal is north of Bang Chun and Lat Krabang industrial estates, home to factories operated by Honda Motor Co., Unilever and Cadbury Plc, and connects to a canal that runs near downtown business areas.

Bangkok officials are struggling to maintain a system of dikes, canals and sandbag barriers designed to divert water around the city center. Floodwaters that spread over 63 of Thailand’s 77 provinces over the past three months have killed 427 people and shuttered 10,000 factories north of Bangkok, disrupting supply chains across Asia.

Forecast Slashed

The Bank of Thailand, which last week slashed its 2011 economic growth forecast to 2.6 percent from 4.1 percent, expects expansion to slow as the global economy weakens and the impact of the nation’s flood crisis increases, according to the minutes of its Oct. 19 meeting released today. Thailand’s inflation rate held above 4 percent for the seventh straight month in October as food costs climbed, government data released yesterday show.

Members of the Bank of Thailand’s Monetary Policy Committee “were concerned about the impact of the still-evolving flood situation, especially on production in key export sectors including rice, automobile, electronics and electrical appliances, as well as tourism, all of which were already feeling the effects of a weaker global economy,” said the minutes.

Emerson Electric Co. (EMR), a U.S. maker of electrical products, will see “more significant” supply disruptions from the Thai floods than from Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Chief Executive Officer David Farr said on a conference call yesterday. Honda, Japan’s third-largest carmaker, abandoned its full-year profit forecast earlier this week on the floods.

45 Days

Thailand’s government said yesterday it may need 45 days to pump water out of seven inundated industrial estates. It will start with Rojana industrial estate in Ayutthaya province on Nov. 7, Permanent Secretary for Industry Witoon Simachokedee said earlier this week.

“After that we will send technicians to check out damage to machinery,” Industry Minister Wannarat Charnnukul told reporters. “For the remaining estates that are not flooded, we have already prepared measures to protect them and we believe they won’t be flooded.”

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ordered the evacuation of eastern parts of Bangkok near the Sam Wa canal yesterday on the risk of flooding, said Thongtong Chantarangsu, a spokesman for the government’s flood relief operations. In western parts of the city, “the flooding has spread and risen,” he said in a national broadcast last night.

Lower Tides

Still, lower tides have allowed more water to drain through the city’s canals toward the Gulf of Thailand, 30 kilometers (19 miles) to the south, Thongtong said.

“The amount of floodwater coming into Bangkok has declined,” he said. “This is a very good sign.”

Flooding in the capital is mainly limited to northern and eastern areas and low-lying places near canals, while the business districts of Silom and lower Sukhumvit remain dry, and Suvarnabhumi Airport and public transport links are unaffected. Shortages of bottled water, eggs and instant noodles have eased after retailers imported products, Permanent Secretary for Commerce Yanyong Phuangrach said yesterday.

Rainfall about 42 percent more than average this year filled dams north of Bangkok to capacity, prompting authorities to release more than 9 billion cubic meters of water down a river basin the size of Florida, with Bangkok at the bottom.

The death toll from the disaster rose to 427 today, according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation. Twenty-six provinces are still affected by flooding, the agency said on its website.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net; Anuchit Nguyen in Bangkok at anguyen@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net