Thailand Will Try To Adopt Singapore Minimum Wage Model

[livinthailandos]

First of all I really not sure how to put the topic to be honest. The article I read came out yesterday in the Nation Paper but wasn't it seems first page news and didn't see it posted on thaivisa yet.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2011/08/02/opinion/Too-high-to-handle-Thailands-future-under-new-gove-30161653.html

Basically it seems it a so called Two High Policy which I address 2 things

1. address labor and wages

2. address food and pricing

By upping the minimum wage to such a high level, the new government is in effect adopting the "Singapore model". Dubbing it the second industrial revolution, the Singaporean government in 1979 raised the wages of civil servants and workers higher than their labour productivity, then tied rewards to performance increases, while concurrently setting up a skills development fund to subsidise employers' training efforts. This consequently created pressure upon employers to upgrade labour productivity by replacing low-skilled labour with high-tech machinery while providing more training to their remaining workers, and hence pushed Singapore from the producer of low-tech goods to a high-tech producer and industrialised country.

However, Singapore's experience also came with ominous consequences. As wages outpaced productivity, manufacturers started to suffer, resulting in the shutting down of factories and numerous businesses going bust. Manufacturing productivity contracted in the three years after the programme started, and recession was experienced in 1985

farmers will get higher income, and the credit card scheme will help them manage their cultivation costs more easily, efficient (and free-from-corruption) management of government's rice stock is far from guaranteed. Storage cost, damaged rice due to its perishable nature, and price management to ensure that Thai rice can compete in the global market are all key risks in the scheme. Above all, it will be intriguing to see how the government manages the almost 100-per-cent rise in the rice price while at the same time keeping the cooked-food price rise to a minimum. Failure to do this will risk more social unrest.

Sorry if posted a lot of information just try to put basic info. Can anyone confirm the whole singapore issue during the 80's if thats true or not about what is mentioned. I know this part was about singapore and what they did about increasing wages but seems to me amount of people in thailand working and size of thailand alone if its true about what happened in singapore should actually be worse. ]

Look forward to all your comments on this

[SomTumTiger]

I think you are giving Puea Thai to much credit for thinking. They are following the model - "Thaksin sh$ts, PTP wipes".

[Thongkorn]

there is supposed to be a minimum wage now in Thailand unless you are a Pomar then its half that .