Major members of the Thai Retailers' Association yesterday urged the Internal Trade Department to reveal the total draft of its proposed new retail business law.

The draft sets out to regulate the expansion of large-scale shopping complexes and control their effect on small traditional retailers.

The demand was made yesterday at a forum organised by the Internal Trade Department and chaired by its director-general Siripol Yodmuangcharoen.

Participants included representatives of modern retailers, local state authorities involved with the proposed regulations, retail-related associations and members of the Federation of Thais Opposing Foreign Retailers.

Thai Retailers' Association president Thanapon Tangkananan said that the association agreed with all stakeholders having a chance to share their views on the retail law.

"However, we should have time and enough information to prepare ourselves to share our points of view and give information from our side. We should have a chance to see the whole draft of the proposed retail regulations," he said.

Tesco Lotus senior vice president Darmp Sukontasap said the last time he saw the draft of the regulations was in November last year.

"At today's forum, the authorities just picked up some articles of the updated draft and asked for comments from participants. How can we share our views without studying the whole draft in detail?" he asked.

"We have no objection if the government deems it appropriate to have a law governing retail and wholesale businesses.

"We also support the idea that everyone in retail and wholesale should co-exist, speaking to each other with reason and working together to provide consumers with quality products at reasonable prices."

However, Darmp said the law should be fair to everyone and treat all concerned equally. It should clearly spell out the role and responsibility of each of the players, be they suppliers, wholesalers or modern-trade retailers. More importantly, the law should include specific measures to help enhance the competitiveness of traditional mom-and-pop stores.

Consumer Force Association of Thailand president Viroj na Bangchang said he agreed with implementation of the retail business law. However, the draft of the new regulations should be open to public scrutiny. "I would like the commerce minister to exercise his power to appoint neutral persons as a selection panel to recruit members of a central regulatory committee for retail and wholesale business," he said.

"The same procedure should be applied to the setting up of provincial regulatory committees for retail and wholesale business, to manage and control retail outlets in individual provinces."

Viroj said that the provincial committees should not be given too much power because they would be easy victims for interference from local politicians or business groups.

Narong Petprasert, a political economist from Chulalongkorn University's economics faculty, said a legal and operational framework should be created for both central and provincial committees, including the locations in which large discount stores are permitted and their business hours, as well as measures for helping small traditional retailers.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

The Nation