SIPA budgets Bt220 million for software-promotion

Sipa president Trairat Chatkaew said the agency’s total budget for next year was Bt305 million, of which Bt85 million was the operating budget and the rest for promotional activities. The industry-promotion budget of Bt220 million is planned to support 30-40 projects.
He said the five promotional |missions were for software-industry policy, developing software businesses, research and development in-novation, intellectual property (IP) and a software-business one-stop service.
Sipa’s software-industry policy next year is to encourage government organisations and small and medium-sized enterprises to use Thai software. It aims to encourage public organisations to adopt ICT systems developed and used by Sipa, a public organisation under the administrative supervision of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Ministry.
To encourage SMEs to use ICT to increase their competitiveness, Sipa works with the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand, the Office of Small and Medium Enterprise Promotion, and the Department of Industrial Promotion to provide loans for businesses that invest in Thai software, with Bt3 million as the maximum.
“Sipa has asked SME Bank to reserve Bt600 million for loans |for SMEs to invest in ICT through purchasing Thai software,” Trairat said.
It is forecast that the overall software market in Thailand will increase by 12 per cent next year. Meanwhile, he said, “The smart-phone market is expected to grow by 40 per cent, which means software for this segment will grow by 30-40 per cent.”
Last year, the total software market was worth Bt60 billion, around Bt35 billion of which was enterprise software (Bt12 billion was digital content and Bt4 billion was embedded software). Of that Bt35 billion, only 15 per cent was Thai software. Sipa aims to increase this portion to 20 per cent.
He said the five key areas Sipa would focus on promoting next year were government, education, industry (including tourism, logistics, food and agriculture, healthcare and jewellery), digital content and SMEs.

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Sipa is working with SME Bank to provide sources of funds to software companies and is also working with the universities to train 3,000 people to serve the software industry.
Next year, Sipa will place emphasis on turning software R&D into commercial services, and focus on encouraging Thai software companies to register their IP.
As the strategy in the global market is co-branding, Sipa’s role is to match Thai software companies with partners in other countries. The partners will market Thai software through bundling models and dealers. The target markets are South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Australia. The agency aims to match around 10 companies that are worth a total of Bt300 million.
“The 10 software companies include [those providing] digital content applications, enterprise software and mobile applications,” Trairat said.
He added that Asean was another focus for Sipa’s promotional activities, with a strategy to build up cooperative branding between Thai firms and regional partners for joint development of software solutions.
Currently, only 20 per cent of Thai software companies have applied for patents. Sipa aims to increase this to 50 per cent by the end of next year to protect them from piracy.
For one-stop service, the agency plans to set up a “Sipa clinic” offering consultancy (marketing, business-plan development, business process, IP registration) and funding sources for software companies.