Thai industries welcome WEF's competitiveness adjustment

[webfact]

Industries welcome WEF's competitiveness adjustment



BANGKOK: -- The World Economic Forum (WEF) adjustment of Thailand’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) for the period 2014 – 2015 from a ranking of 37 up to 31 on a total of 144 countries comes as a welcome news to businesses in the country.

Jirathep Seniwong na Ayuthaya, the spokesman for the Bank of Thailand, stated that this was entirely due to improvements in Thailand’s inflation, national budget as well as welfare and education systems.

Overall this is a reflection of the confidence in the economic policies formulated by the present government. As for the planned systematic national structural reforms, expert opinion is that this will enable Thailand to improve its GCI ranking or at the very least, maintain its current position.

Suchart Jantara-nakratch, deputy chairman in charge of labour of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) said Thailand is facing an acute shortage of labour force with overall labour shortages amounting to 200,000 – 300,000 persons.

In the recent past, industries have had to resort to hiring foreign labor to meet the shortfall and allow their businesses to continue to operate.

But following the new rules set out by the Board of Investment (BOI) that aims to promote increased investment in the country and thereby disallowing the hiring of foreign workers, hiring from outside the country is now not an option for Thai businesses.

This has resulted in the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking to submit a proposal to the BOI to allow the relaxation of the rules governing foreign labor to avert the closure of many labour intensive industries in the country due to labour shortages.

Thiranan Srihong, the executive manager of Kasikorn Bank, meanwhile, believes that the Thai economy will still experience a minimum growth of 2% this year.

This is actually a drop from the four year projections that forecasted growths of between 3 – 4%.

He advises that the new government should put in major investments in infrastructure projects in order to allow sustained growth in the country’s competitiveness.

Furthermore, measures to attract foreign investment and the restructuring of outdated laws on investments and taxes in the country will be urgently needed.

Mr Thiranan added that should all the policies be put in place then there is no reason why the Thai economy should not grow by 3 – 4% by the year 2015.

Source: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/industries-welcome-wefs-competitiveness-adjustment/


-- Thai PBS 2014-09-04

[chainarong]

Restructuring outdated laws is a great comment by Thiranan, Thaksin Sinawatra was going to modernise the mining act in 06, nothing has happened , holdings ones breath could cause permanent damage if waiting for Thailand to come up to speed on what is one of the worlds worst paper nightmare, called Thai Administration, regardless of which department, there is certainly more red tape than what documents are required and generally at the interpretation of the person serving, nothing is set in stone, Thailand is a nightmare to do business with, even down to immigration.