BANGKOK: Thailand’s junta will invoke a constitutional provision this week to help speed investment approvals in an ambitious $44-billion effort to develop the country’s industrial east, a government spokesman said on Tuesday. Growth in Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy has lagged regional peers since the army took power in 2014. Planned large infrastructure projects have been slow to get off the ground. The military government hopes the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) development project will lift growth to about 5 percent a year by 2020, from a projected figure of around 3 percent to 4 percent this year. “The government is committed to the EEC in order to drive the country’s economy,” the government spokesman, Sansern Kaewkamnerd, told reporters, adding that he expected the measure to be announced this week. The measure will allow a panel chaired by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to approve public-private investment projects in the corridor, hastening a process that now takes between eight and nine months, Sansern said. It will also help cut to less than a year the time needed for environment impact assessments, he added.