SEPO draws up five-year plan to improve country’s transport system
THE STATE Enterprise Policy Office (SEPO) will propose to Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak its five-year strategic plan for 11 transport-related state enterprises, aiming to increase annual transport investment by 10 per cent and reduce goods-transport costs to 6.9 per cent of gross domestic product.
Krichthep Simlee, acting deputy permanent secretary of the Transport Ministry, said SEPO had proposed to the ministry a strategic plan running from 2017 to 2021. It involves 11 state enterprises under the ministry and complies with the national five-year state-enterprise strategic plan.
Under the SEPO plan, the first strategy calls for raising the capability of Thailand’s transportation services to international levels and more efficient supervision and oversight to reduce accidents.
Initially, the Transport Ministry has a policy to reduce the number of fatal road accidents to 4.07 per million kilometres of travel by 2021 and the number of air-freight accidents from six in 2015 to none.
The second strategy involves investment in transport infrastructure to enhance the country’s competitiveness and economic stability with sustainability, and develop technology and information technology for more efficiency. SEPO has set a target for state enterprises’ investment in the transportation system to expand by at least 10 per cent per year. Goods-transport costs are targeted to drop from 7.4 per cent of GDP in 2015 to 6.9 per cent.
The transport of goods by rail is targeted to rise to at least 4 per cent of the total from last year’s 1.4 per cent, while water transport of goods is required to increase to at least 15 per cent from 11.44 per cent.
The third strategy involves state enterprises’ capability to generate income from their core and non-core businesses, while reducing the losses that some have suffered due to too-high expenses for staff and inefficient operations.
The fourth strategy is to increase governance and good management, and the fifth aims at innovation and technological improvement for the transportation system.
Krichthep said the Transport Ministry would send SEPO its comments and additional information on the strategic plan tomorrow (Dec 21) and propose it to Somkid on December 23 Friday before forwarding it to the State Enterprise Policy Committee chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha next month.
The strategic plans of each state enterprise in the transportation field will be drawn up this month and in January for the committee’s review in March.
