Agriculture and trade 'in need of long-term measures'

After the first year of the military-led government’s administration, private-sector representatives say they are quite satisfied with its short-term measures to solve economic problems, but would like to see longer-term policies to support the agricultural and trading sectors.

Business lobbies give the regime good marks for tackling such short-term challenges as sluggish domestic spending and exports, rising living costs, illegal fishing practices, labour problems and substandard aviation oversight. However, they have yet to see sustainable measures to prevent future problems and promote long-term economic growth.

These measures would include agricultural-sector development and trade-promotion plans.

Pornsilp Patchrintanakul, adviser to the Board of Trade, urged the government to draw up a long-term measure to develop a "green agriculture and food production" policy to serve the changes in consumer demands.

"Since Thailand is still based on the agricultural sector, the government should focus on enhancing green agriculture from upstream to downstream to ensure sustainable growth of the farming sector and to serve rising concerns over the environment, food safety, and food security," he said.

Pornsilp said the government was currently focused on short-term solutions, but it was time to draw up long-term measures to develop the agricultural sector.

Green agriculture means restructuring farming to be concerned about environmental impacts, reduce the costs of |production and water usage, and move away from the use of chemicals, while the agro-industrial sector should also be concerned with green production processes.

He explained that the world market was now concerned |with green products, so Thailand should respond to this trend, as it would not only benefit trading in the long term, but was also good to the environment and farmers’ health.

A source from the rice industry said that since this regime had suspended the rice-pledging programme of the elected government the military ousted last year, it had still not announced a national rice-industry development plan, but had only come out with short-term solutions to help farmers.

"About 4 million farming |households are waiting for a |clear government agenda for |developing rice farming and |the rice industry."

The source added that zoning measures had not yet taken effect, while the cost of rice farming was getting higher every year, while the price of rice fluctuates greatly in the global market.

Nopporn Thepsithar, chairman of the Thai National Shippers Council, said four measures were required to ensure sustainable trade growth.

The first is to renegotiate, revise, or start talks on free-trade agreements with many countries such as India, China and Russia.

He said that although Thailand already had FTAs with some countries, some of these pacts did not yet cover many goods, and some barriers still hindered growth of Thailand’s trade with targeted markets.

The second measure is to modernise trade and investment regulations and standards to meet international requirements and the World Trade Organisation’s rules so that Thailand does not face any obstructions when trading overseas.

Third, he called on the government to invest in trade facilitation and lead Thai traders to penetrate overseas markets.

The government should lead enterprises, particularly small and medium-sized ones, to explore new markets, and help establish a "marketplace" for Thai traders in each country.

For instance, Nopporn said the government should invest in infrastructure for exporters, such as building warehouses or distribution centres in new markets, so exporters could easily do business overseas.

Fourth, the council chairman said Thailand needed a dedicated Web page to promote trade online, along the lines of China’s Alibaba.