Mr. Auttapol Rerkpiboon, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communication and Social Responsibility, PTT Public Company Limited, revealed that as the PTT Retail Management Company (PTTRM), PTT Group’s affiliate on retail business, has expressed interest in bidding for Carrefour retail assets in Thailand as appeared on the news, PTT would like to clarify the reasons of this attentiveness as follow:

 1. PTTRM have studied the trend of oil retail business abroad such as France, England, United States and Australia, and found that the Stand Alone Oil business tends to decrease and turning to have the Gas station together with Hypermarket to add up the return of investment. New oil business trend is continuously increased of selling oil through hypermarket.

 2. Most of Carrefour 43 branches locate in Bangkok and perimeter areas where PTT has a few stations to serve customers. This will be an opportunity to expand the gas station to cover such areas, and adding distribution channel for PTT products and services i.e. Lubricant and Car Care service.

 3. Moreover, PTT will promote Thai products/community products through the hypermarket network as well as boosting the Thai-owned retail business to grow strong together.

 However, as various PTT stakeholders have expressed a concern that PTT should not participate in this bidding; therefore, PTT will instruct PTTRM to end its bid to buy Carrefour's retail assets in Thailand.