Since taking the helm as deputy prime minister and industry minister a month ago, Kosit Panpiemras has tried to warn the business community not to expect too much.

"We will only spend a year in office," he said. "There are limitations to what we can do."

But his humble statement does not hide the fact that the interim government wants to trans-

form the mindset of business people about how the future will unfold.

And the agenda is not easy to communicate when, according to him, people are used to policy platforms that they can readily visualise, such as government spending, domestic demand and tax changes.

The first of the two key policy platforms is "sufficiency economy", a principle that is a direct English translation of His Majesty the King's words embracing, among other things, sustainable development, good governance and risk management, according to Kosit.

The former executive chairman of Bangkok Bank agreed that such a principle might have been more appropriately understood in the aftermath of the 1997 economic crisis. But it has evolved with a wider meaning.

"It is not counter to globalisation, but in fact calls for a mindset to keep abreast of it. It is a principle which does not have a one-answer formula, but is for each and everyone to adopt according to their own context."

One of the offshoots of a sufficiency economy is protection or risk management, to which businesses ought to pay a lot more attention. This leads to the second key policy platform: productivity.

Again, Kosit said there was no quick and fixed formula. Productivity improvement will mean different things to different firms.

For some it will be a matter of energy saving and for others more use of knowledge and intellectual property.

"We cannot develop just by going for more investment or hiring more people. Do you think you can ever be able to compete with China, which has become the factory of the world?" he said.

It is about management of costs, reducing bottlenecks in the supply chain and waste reduction, he added.

Both a sufficiency economy and productivity improvement are two key policy platforms that Kosit has instructed different ministries to work towards in setting their different agendas, measures and regulations - and likewise for companies.

In this new policy realm, the minister has already put his foot down about furthering tax incentives for the Board of Investment. He also did away with the big budget for the Bangkok Fashion Week.

Kosit is also integrating the work of the Industry Ministry with the Science Ministry to build a new knowledge-based economic policy platform.

Kosit said the growth target of 4-5 per cent for gross domestic product ought to be readily achievable in the context of the sufficiency-economy and productivity-improvement platforms.

He added that the national budget for the next six months had been set and by next April, the government will have sufficient time to reset priorities which will lay the foundation for the future, including what it must do to nurture momentum in economic productivity.

Despite a certain humility that surrounds them, the new policy platforms of the interim government represent a radical departure from the go-for-growth policy of the Thaksin Shinawatra administration and most other previous governments.

Kosit has one undisputed credential to deter the return to conventional growth-oriented economic management: he was the first among very few sceptical economists to warn the public of the 1996 economic bubble, which led to the 1997 crash.