Somkid tries to lift business via SMEs
Caretaker Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Somkid Jatusripitak has met business leaders in an attempt to boost confidence in the economy and government.
They discussed how to strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) amid the present political uncertainty. Business confidence has been eroded because of doubts about when a new general election will be held and a new government formed, delaying government spending and causing firms to adopt wait-and-see strategies. Somkid assured business people that the new government budget could be implemented in March next year instead of October this year. He also urged the private sector to improve its competitiveness without waiting for politics to settle. Representatives from the Federation of Thai Industries, Thai Chamber of Commerce, Thai Bankers Association and Federation of Thai Capital Market Organisations met senior officials from the Finance, Industry and Commerce ministries in Cha-am. Somkid told a press conference yesterday that business leaders and government were committed to strengthening SMEs. According to a report presented to the meeting, SMEs face problems such as over-supply of their products, difficulty in getting financial support, low innovation and a slowness to apply information technology. Personal income-tax breaks and higher salaries are among proposed solutions to encourage talented workers to come up with new products and services. Suvit Maesincee, vice minister for commerce, said new facilities would be created in order to encourage university laboratory researchers to become entrepreneurs. Providing financial support and appropriate intellectual protection would help, he said. SMEs will also be encouraged to invest in research and development, because Thai firms spend only 0.26 per cent of gross domestic product in that area. Suvit also said SMEs would be urged to invest in information technology, where Thailand had been lagging far behind South Korea and Singapore. SMEs will be encouraged to invest abroad and to link to global networking, he said. Suvit said the ministry would soon invite global thinkers Thomas Friedman, who wrote the best-selling book "The World is Flat", and Kenichi Ohmae, author of "The Next Global Stage", to talk to Thai entrepreneurs on their visions of the world in the next five to 10 years. Somkid said the private sector had agreed to set up a joint committee to assess the constraints facing businesses, particularly SMEs, which would facilitate close cooperation between the public and private sectors. Wichit Chaitrong The Nation Cha-am
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