Reform urged for crisis management
Scholars and business leaders yesterday called for bureaucratic and political reform to forge unity of the nation and for decentralised management to tackle uncertainties and crises in the future.
"We must learn from last year’s flood because Thailand suffered about Bt1.4 trillion in business losses from the disaster. According to the World Bank’s estimate, 90 per cent was in manufacturing," said Veerathai Santiprabhop, executive director of Capital Market Research at the Stock Exchange of Thailand.
This issue was addressed at the "Recovery after the 2011 flood and prevention measures for 2012" seminar organised by the Alumni Association of Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration at Chulalongkorn University along with B Grimm and Thansethakij newspaper.
Veerathai said businesses should underline improving operating efficiency to overcome rising production and insurance costs, while the government should reform the bureaucratic system to cope promptly with uncertainties. He cited Malaysia’s Vision 2020, aimed at making Malaysia a developed country by 2020 through the implementation of economic and bureaucratic reforms.
be prepared
Boonyakiat Chokwattana, president of ICC International, said foreign investors still had confidence in the country even though businesses in the fourth quarter of last year were hit hard by the disaster. Thailand has many things to offer including value-for-money services, lower production costs and Thai hospitality.
However, manufacturers should make sure that they are well prepared while new investors are likely to relocate their plants to more elevated areas, instead of flood-hit areas, to ensure that they did not have to endure a repeat of the crisis, he added.
Royol Chitradon, director of the Hydro and Agro Informatics Institute, said water management should be modernised similar to the development of small and medium-sized enterprises after the economic crisis in 2007, when big companies and financial institutions collapsed. The irrigation development plan initiated by the government should not only integrate major dams, dykes and canal networks but also surrounding areas.
Government bodies should conduct quality research, particularly for meteorology and irrigation, and decentralise policy-making to allow people in rural areas or in each community to solve any problem on their own.
Chai-Anan Samudavanija, an eminent scholar, said the government should revise its roles from operating to policy-making, particularly in a crisis.
"The recent massive flooding proved that the current government failed to manage the crisis while people lost their confidence in the government and politicians," he said.
