Macroeconomics/country development

Chatrudee Theparat

PM Prayut Chan-o-cha vows to continue country development with three pillars

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha vowed to drive the country development to have inclusive growth or prosperity nationwide with three main pillars of infrastructure, electrical vehicles and smart agriculture and financial sector development.

He said infrastructure development will be instrumental to create inclusive growth nationwide. However, inclusive growth could not success with unreasonable incentives like cash handout.

“We need to build basic infrastructure ranging from roads, highways, railroads, deep seaports and digital infrastructure. Those infrastructure projects will help farmers to easily access to their markets, to facilitate ordinary people to earn their income, as well as to be useful for visitors and foreign investment.”

The government has launched an implementation plan of major infrastructure development projects since 2015 such as Laem Chabang deep seaport, which will be developed as one among five significant global gateways within 2-3 years. Also, airports nationwide will be developed to achieve 18 in its number within 13-16 months, up from 6 airports in 2015. Railroads will be developed to make a big change of Thai transport and logistics and build a connectivity to the region.

Digital infrastructure development is in the pipeline as well. Cloud computing of Amazon Web Services with 190 billion baht in 15 years and investment from companies in smart electronics and upstream industry of electronics are among examples.

He said the second pillar is EVs industry development. It is considered a major industry of the global trend which would create wealth in the country. So, Thailand needs to prepare, to drive and position itself to capture this opportunity following the trend. The policy will be put in place over the next 12 months.

“The government will drive the electrical vehicle industry to create prosperity among Thai people over ten years with job creation at home, generate domestic economy and export revenue. About 10 leading companies from China, Japan, EU and the US will use Thailand as their production bases.”

For smart agriculture, Gen Prayut said the government will provide water supply and innovation to transform farm production, to support smart farmers with research & development, high technology and machinery.

The third pillar is the financial sector which will play a significant role to drive the country development.

“The past government would not touch the banking sector but on my own idea, banks play an important role to help drive the economy in long term. However, half of Thai population could not access loan. We need to solve this problem.”

If banks provide loan to young entrepreneurs, start-ups, smart farmers and small and medium enterprises, these financial institutions can create wealth not only to those people, but also to themselves.

Banks in the US and EU have changed their criteria on collateral by using technology to evaluate for their lending and capability of small SMEs and ordinary people.

“I hope that Thai banks will adjust their policies. I am very grateful that some commercial banks announced to support small borrowers. This means to create opportunity for at least 30 million people to access loans.