Government Policies

Introduction

The economic crisis of 1997 still affects Thailand's economy, as illustrated by the slow down of foreign direct investment within the past couple of years. In response to this stifled capital flow, the Thai Government is taking steps to adjust its legal and regulatory regime with the objective of creating a more competitive climate for foreign investment. This is an ongoing process and the most resistance is coming from indigenous business and political interests.

Today, science and technology are becoming essential components of  various industrialization processes.  Thailand possesses a limited number of natural resources, and many of them have deteriorated because of exploitation activities that occurred under the negligent control of the government. To improve these processes in Thailand and to enhance their industrialization efforts, the Thai Government muse begin to steadily improve their local science and technology capabilities.¹ 

The Ministry of Science and Technology   back to top

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Energy [MOSTE] was established in1979. This Ministry's responsibilities focused on the development of Thailand's domestic science and technology sector.² Before the establishment of this ministry, these activities were implemented by several public institutions, but without any organized or effective coordination.  The inefficiencies resulted in the overlapping of functions, operations, and tasks. As a result, were no effective policies for the development of science and technology.²

Thailand has been importing technologies for industrial production for more than 60 years from countries like the United States, Japan, Great Britain,  Germany, France and Italy.  In the past such transfer was arbitrary and companies were free to purchase equipment and technological know-how which they considered to be profitable. This resulted in unnecessary losses of capital and a lot of redundant transactions.  So in order to help coordinate these transfers and lessen duplicated efforts,  a Technology Transfer Division was established within the Ministry of Science and Technology. The main objective of this division is to promote more effective transfers and to provide guidelines to local industries on how one these companies can increase their profits by improving their methods of technology transfer.³

Thailand and the WTO   back to top

In late March 1997, Thailand joined 38 other countries in signing the Information Technology Agreement, negotiated under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO). These countries account for 92.5 percent of the world's IT trade, which is worth US $600 billion a year and is one of the biggest growth areas of international commerce. Under the agreement, they will cut tariffs on computers, telecommunications products, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, software, CD-ROMs, and scientific instruments. The cuts are to begin July 1 this year and be completed by Jan. 1, 2000. Free trade will significantly boost manufacturers, lower costs for customers, and improve and spread the technology worldwide. The IT agreement complements the telecommunications agreement reached in February 1997, also under WTO auspices. About 70 countries including Thailand agreed to open markets in telephone services, fax and data transmission.⁴

Privatization   back to top

The pressure is on and the time for the Thai government to follow through with its promise to privatize the highly regulated telecommunications industry and make real initiatives cannot be put off much longer. The country did not meet the original deadline of October, 2000, to establish the National Telecommunications Company (NTC), which is the regulatory body that will ensure fair business practices within the domestic telecommunications industry. However, several of the State Owned Enterprises have begun to take substantial steps towards becoming private and this will eventually force the country to implement the NTC as planned. The next deadline has been set for March, 2001 and it is anticipated that this time the transaction will be fulfilled.⁵

E-Government   back to top

Another e-government project, called KhonThai.com, was designed to give the citizen easy access to their personal and registered data, such as household registration, marital status, citizen ID number, and data on change of address, names and nationalities. The project has not yet been fully launched, but the government anticipates that it will improve public service quality and save money. Many of the paper-based documents and activities that are normally executed by people, will become available on the web, which will enable the government to concentrate its human resources in areas that are not IT based and hopefully increasing the overall efficiency of the government. This project is not exclusively government controlled, like the e-Thailand project, but is instead a joint project between the private sector, the Department of Local Administration, and the online tax filing and payment project by the Revenue Department.⁶

The Revenue Department is one of the most progressive agencies to develop their part of the e-government projects (all, which are indirectly, associated with each other through Thailand’s overall IT agenda). Today, the government is testing its online tax payment system at its site, but at the moment is only available to large taxpayers. The Department has already noticed savings in money and an acceleration of the overall tax return process.⁷

ASEAN    back to top 

ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and it was established in 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand. The five original countries included Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei Darussalam joined in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and finally Cambodia joined the community in 1999. The main objective in setting up this alliance was to accelerate the economic growth, social progress and cultural development of the Southeast Asian countries as a region.⁸

In 1992, leaders of ASEAN approved a Thai proposal to establish the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), which aims to reduce tariffs on most processed agricultural and industrial products traded among ASEAN countries. The goal is to reduce specified tariffs to 0-5% by the year 2007. The projected date to establish AFTA is 2003.⁹

E-ASEAN     back to top 

The e-ASEAN project, also know as the AII (ASEAN Information Infrastructure) project will be a collaboration of all national information infrastructures of the ASEAN countries. While maintaining a specific regional content, the project intends to link ASEAN member national information infrastructures and establishing one common platform for the South East Asian region. Essentially, this project aims to create an e-community among the Southeast Asian countries.¹⁰

The ASEAN Economic Ministers created a high-level public-private sector advisory body that is responsible for the development of a broad-based and comprehensive action plan towards creating the ASEAN e-community. The action plan will cover the necessary physical, legal, logistical, social and economic infrastructure issues. Each ASEAN Leader will name two members to the Task Force and one of them must come from the private sector, while the other will be a public official.¹¹

Kogod School of Business           American University        Other Country Reports

Sources:

¹  http://www.mahidol.ac.th/Thailand/tran-comm/Transport-and-Communication.html

²   Ibid

³  Ibid

⁴  The World Trade Organization

⁵  "Information Technology Development," International Market Insight, 5/23/2000

^{6  "}Thailand Starting to Move on Information Technology," Asia-Point Network

⁷  ibid

^{8  http://www.asean.or.id}

⁹ ibid

¹⁰ ibid

¹¹ ibid