Govt urged to also help big companies go abroad
THE GOVERNMENT should change its mindset about offering help only to small and medium-size firms expanding overseas and extend it to larger companies, said Thiraphong Chansiri, president and chief executive of Thai Union Group.
Thiraphong added that a new challenge for companies branching out internationally was working out how to produce products that suited the new generation of consumers.
He was speaking at the International Capital Markets Conference 2015, which looked at the challenges for Thai firms growing international roots.
Thiraphong said the government believed large companies could take care of themselves overseas but they wanted to get assistance – whether it is financial support or tax incentives in the countries they operated in.
He said Thai financial institutions should strongly support Thai firms internationally because they were nobodies to foreign banks. Thai Union had to create creditability in the foreign markets it operated in to raise funds.
He said that raising funds was a challenge for the company when it first invested in the United States and Europe.
It needed to create creditability in the eyes of foreign banks and investors because it required a huge amount of money to support mergers and acquisitions.
After 20 years, he said the challenge for Thai Union was shifting from raising funds to management because as a global company building the same culture for its Thai, US and EU interests was very tough.
Thapana Sirivadhanabhakdi, president and chief executive officer of Thai Beverage, told the conference a challenge facing the company was building strong brands to compete with global players in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
He said the emerging market was experiencing a boom in consumer spending power due to rapid development and they increasingly expected quality products. ThaiBev, armed with a business vision extending to 2020, has to understand the thinking of consumers in each GMS countries.
“Our products are produced in Thailand and Malaysia. And in case we have to export our products to consumers in Myanmar, the products should come from Thailand because Myanmar consumers flavour products from Thailand,” he said.
He said the GMS was providing a lot of opportunities for Thai firms to tap.
However, Thiraphong said now was not the right time for Thai Union to enter the GMS because the consumer spending power there was still quite low compared to developed countries.
Chartsiri Sophonpanich, president of Bangkok Bank, recommended Thai firms look to enter CLMV countries – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam – as they had bright prospects due to requiring a lot of infrastructure investment.
The energy and food sectors were particularly appealing, Chartsiri said.
Shinya Miyazaki, chief representative for international cooperation at Japan Bank in Bangkok, said Thailand had good potential to scale up the economy via infrastructure project investments. Shinya said his bank was ready to support Japanese firms that wanted to cash in on this opportunity.
