BOI package to back ‘creative spaces’, talent

The package, due to be approved shortly by the BOI board chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, will also provide incentives to “creative spaces” as well as creative products and services, said Deputy Commerce Minister Suvit Maesincee.
“The BOI will be able to offer investment-promotion privileges to startups and to ‘spaces’. Because in bid to create a big bang, we may need to support a man-made tourism [projects] such as the one to make the whole of Ayutthaya a historic city, which may require investment in at tune of a hundred billion baht,” he said.
Other creative-space projects would include the Thailand Creative & Design Centre’s project to establish Bangkok as the “world design capital” or Chiang Mai as the “creativity city”.
The creative economy is |estimated to worth Bt1.6 trillion, accounting for 13.8 per cent of Thailand’s gross domestic product, comprising 10 sectors including three that are fundamentally strong, namely fashion, design andbroadcasting.
It would not be too difficult for Thailand to increase the size of |its creative economy to at least |20 per cent of the GDP within |the next three to five years, Suvit said.
Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak, who is leading an official delegation to South Korea this week, said Thailand would centralise its efforts to promote a creative economy including through supporting collaborative partnerships between the public and private sectors and local communities for fostering start-ups and community products under the Otop scheme.
Somkid said large South Korean companies such as Samsung had realised that they could leapfrog to future industries through utilising the “brains” of start-ups, and big Thai companies should also join forces to support start-ups for their own benefits.
To launch the government’s efforts, a “Thailand Start-ups” event will be organised on April 28, 2016.
Suvit said South Korea had successfully used the “co-creation” concept or what is called in Thailand the “Pracha Rath” model to bring the public and private sectors together to restructure the economy.
For example, he noted, of the 200 billion won (Bt6 billion) spent in the Korean city of Busan last year to promote new economic drivers such as the Internet |of Things, movies and logistics, |half came from the country’s |Lotte conglomerate, 25 per cent from the local government, and |25 per cent from the central |government through state-bank loans.