Nipping off dead leaves and reshaping trees at the Orangery restaurant on the fourth floor of Siam Paragon, the impeccably dressed MR Chatu Mongol Sonakul has a happy look on his face.

The sight of the partner of this classy restaurant doing the gardening work himself might come as a surprise to well-off shoppers, but anyone who is close to him knows that gardening is his favourite hobby at home and also at various workplaces over the past 40 years.

 Civil servant-turned-businessman Chatu Mongol is a real tree lover. He planted various types of trees when he was permanent-secretary at the Ministry of Finance and governor of the Bank of Thailand. Whenever he had free time, he would duck out of his air-conditioned office to appreciate the beauty of nature outdoors, inform gardeners how to take care of trees and even pinch off decayed leaves by hand. 

"A 100-year-old organisation must have its own history - for example, this tree was planted by His Majesty the King at the opening ceremony. Life must have these elements," Chatu Mongol says, referring to the Finance Ministry where he once made history. He planted, raised and rehabilitated the key financial organisations of the Kingdom until they became grown-up.

 Like a withered tree in a modern town, the Revenue Department was revived by Chatu Mongol when he became deputy director-general. He wiped out the bad impression of taxpayers - the unfriendly behaviour of tax officials and long queues in a hot room - and replaced it with a new image of service-minded officials providing a comfortable process of tax payment.

 "The way to collect more taxes is to facilitate the good taxpayers with a convenient and easy process," says Chatu Mongol or Mom Tao.

 Without any orders from senior officials, he initiated a computerised database system, brought down tax rates to acceptable levels, restructured the tax system and improved many impractical tax rules which had been neglected by the Revenue Department for a the long time.

 "It's very strange that there had been many impractical rules. I was there to solve the problem and will never understand until now why the others did not introduce practical improvements," he says.

 Unlike other conservative civil servants, Chatu Mongkul had his own witty way to inspire officials to increase tax collection. He distributed overall tax records into tax offices around the country, allowing the officials to compare their performance with associates. As a result, embarrassed officials with a zero-baht revenue record rushed to collect revenue from tax evaders and bring them into the system.

 When he became the top leader of the Finance Ministry, Chatu Mongkul modernised the ancient tree with new methods. He introduced computers among officials as he had done in the Revenue Department. But he shook up - and raised the heartbeats - of all directors of the ministry's departments and

executives of state-run banks by compelling them to work on computers and surf the Internet by themselves. He could check how often the executives logged in on the computers.

 For people in modern times, working on a computer is a very easy and familiar thing to do - like eating dessert. But for the old generation of senior civil servants in the past decade, whose secretaries always hung around to help, it was like swallowing a bitter pill.

 "I sent words of command by e-mail in order to force the officials to become familiar with using a computer. In just one week, everybody had a computer and could send e-mail. When I sent my C-9 appointment via e-mail, I was talked about widely in the ministry. I did not know and I did not care whether they praised or abused me because I wanted to do that and it was the right thing," says the former permanent secretary, who is known as a straightforward man.

 But he accepted the failure of his method after only one director-general logged on the net since the others were not familiar with the Thai-alphabet keyboard. Three ministers and a top executive of a state-run bank also declined to be engaged with the high-tech appliance.

 Chatu Mongol's attempt was not completely useless since he led government agencies to walk into the high-tech era. He was approved by authorised agencies to send secret and urgent documents via e-mail - a procedure later followed by other ministries and state organisations around the country.

When he shifted to the central bank, Chatu Mongol was stunned by an unexpected response from the lofty tree: he did not obtain any briefings from the central bankers at all. As a result, he learnt monetary policy and other issues by himself.

"I was startled instantly when asked by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand whether I would deal with inflation targeting. At that time, I had never heard of it before because I did not get a briefing despite the fact that inflation targeting is the core principle for modern central banks," he says, adding he believes that adopting inflation targeting has encouraged a steady and stable economy and increased competitiveness.

 He pointed out that the types of people in the central bank were not varied enough, consisting of only scholarship graduates, ordinary graduates and non-degree persons. He had no time to solve the problem. He says that if he had one year more in office, he would have revised the entry-requirement process.

 Chatu Mongol is currently an influential shareholder of CM Solutions, running various businesses, including the Orangery restaurant. He has learned that dealing with the orange glasshouse is quite different from handling state organisations. Amid high competition, he has to satisfy employees, investors from the private equity fund and, absolutely, customers. 

 He calls himself an artist, participating in design. He gives architects his opinion, for example, that a group of tables should be private enough to meet customers' satisfaction. He hung movie screens in the restaurant to attract more customers, and hired more marketing officers to strengthen the restaurant's management. He coordinates with branch expansions, including a new Pattaya branch, and offers ideas about how to deal with Thai customers who always dine in a large gang.

 Today, MR Chatu Mongol has passed through a political storm and now is walking into a business storm. He is the first businessman in his noble family because he wants to fulfil his dream of becoming a millionaire, a step down from his former dream of being a tycoon. He says he wants to run various kinds of businesses to serve the long-term well-being of the descendants in his family tree.

 He really loves his tree.

Anoma Srisukkasem

 The Nation