Thailand plans to open a consular office in Dawei to serve Thai investors to Myanmar's southern port city, said Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Monday.

The lady prime minister made her comment following her one-day trip to Dawei where she viewed progress in the construction of a deep-sea port and industrial estate by Italian-Thai Development Co.

Yingluck confirmed that the Thai government will encourage Thai firms and businesspersons to invest in Dawei's Special Economic Zone and that the planned consulate will open, probably next year, to provide conveniences for those investors.

Dawei's 8.6 billion U.S. dollars deep-sea port and industrial estate will be linked by road and rail to Thailand's Kanchanaburi province while oil and gas pipelines will be laid from inside Myanmar to the Thai western province.

Yingluck met with Myanmar President Thein Sein and high-level government officials at the construction site and discussed the deep-sea port and industrial estate projects for which the Thai government earlier agreed to provide financial support.

Given such infrastructures, Dawei is speculated to become a hub of logistics in the Greater Mekong Subregion, covering Indochinese states, Thailand, Myanmar and Kunming in southern China. The Myanmar port is designed to save logistic time and costs for seagoing mercantile vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea, bypassing a congested Strait of Malacca and Singapore.

Accompanying the lady prime minister to Dawei on Monday were Deputy Prime Minister/Finance Minister Kittirat na Ranong, Energy Minister Pongsak Raktapongpaisal, Transport Minister Chadchart Sittipun and Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul.