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OSMEP board approves Bt4-bn budget for fiscal 2016
The board of the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion (OSMEP) has approved a Bt4-billion budget for the 2016 fiscal year.
Industry Minister Chakkamon Phasukvanich said the money would be spent on advancing three strategies – promoting new small and medium-sized enterprises, enhancing the production efficiency of SMEs, and upgrading more SMEs so they become exporters.
The minister said the strategy details had been forwarded to the Budget Bureau.
He told the board that SMEs accounted for more than 90 per cent of the country’s businesses.
Chakkamon said SME promotion required cluster development, as this would entice businesses to become a part of an industry.
For example, halal food SMEs could be promoted to become part of the food-industry cluster.
Deputy Prime Minister MR Pridiyathorn Devakula chairs the OSMEP board.
No plan to hike retail price of LPG: ministry
The Energy Ministry has no plan to increase the retail price of liquefied petroleum gas, deputy permanent secretary Tawarat Sutabutr said yesterday.
The ministry believes the restructuring of LPG prices encourages fair practice
for different types of usage, he said.
If the world market price and the assortment cost of LPG increased after the price restructuring, the retail price of LPG in the domestic market may decline further due to the market mechanism, he said.
“We have monitored the situation very closely and do not have any policy to increase the price of LPG,” said Tawarat.
Price restructuring would allow the assortment cost of LPG to reflect the actual appropriate cost, and encourage fairness among different types of user, he added.
Consumer goods set to be certified for weight, quantity
The Internal Trade Department plans to introduce a certificate symbol that can be placed on consumer products that meet official packaging standards.
Jarin Sutthanarak, director of the Weights and Measures Bureau, said the certificate would be issued this year on consumer products to guarantee consumers that they are purchasing goods that have the weight and quantity as prescribed on the label.
The certification is aimed at boosting consumer confidence after the department received complaints about unfair and missing quantity information on some product packaging.
