Mid-sized exporters still face expensive hurdles
Though the Thai government claims that it has promoted small and medium-sized exporters, a study finds that its actual practice has favoured big exporters.
Small exporters face high costs as export markets impose non-tariff barriers, said Siriluksana Khoman, an economist at Thammasat University. She explained that developed countries used standardisation partly as a tool to protect their own industries. Big Thai firms can overcome the issue by investing millions of baht in hiring lobbyists to broker licences from importers' countries, she said at an annual seminar last week hosted by Thammasat's economics faculty, whereas smaller firms cannot afford to. The issue could be resolved if the government negotiated a mutual-recognition agreement (MRA) which would reduce the cost and processing of goods inspection at ports, she suggested. "When I asked 200 big firms whether they wanted the government to sign an MRA with trade partners, none of them said yes," she said. She later found that these firms had already gone through the red-tape process and did not want an MRA because they did not want competition from small firms, she explained. "When I asked officials for their response on the issue, they told me the government would negotiate an MRA if private companies requested one, but so far they had not," she said. The government will not negotiate an MRA until it decides on a free-trade agreement (FTA) with trade partners, she said. She also pointed that there existed close cooperation between government agencies and big firms on tracing chemical residue in food products by joint investment in equipment and laboratory space; she did not find any such cooperation between the government and small firms. For this she blamed non-tariff barriers in the United States, Japan, Europe and Canada. She also questioned whether these countries wanted to protect their consumers from substandard products or to promote quality in the form of inspection, service and equipment. As an example of standards she cited Codex, a committee founded to detect carcinogenicity in food, consumer products and the environment, and said good agricultural and manufacturing practices and hazard analysis of critical control points were essential. She was disappointed that World Trade Organisation negotiations focused more on tariff reduction than on non-tariff measures. She said many of the standardisation regulations already in place were unnecessary.
Wichit Chaitrong The Nation
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