Thailand’s digital companies employing Vietnamese to fill skills gap in workforce

The warning came as the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) revealed the results of a survey showing explosive growth in Thailand’s digital industries.

The “2021 Digital Industry Survey” showed revenue of Thai digital industries grew 25 per cent to 898 billion baht from a year earlier.

But that impressive growth was not being matched by Thailand’s workforce, which is still lagging behind neighbouring countries such as Vietnam in terms of tech workers and developers, said experts.

Pathom Indarodom, of the Digital Council Committee, said Thailand is suffering a significant gap between “infrastructure readiness and people readiness”.

Speaking at a seminar on “The Direction of the Thai Digital Industry: Moving Forward with DEPA", Pathom observed that while Thailand's private sector has invested heavily in digital equipment and systems, it is still short of highly skilled digital workers. To sustain growth, many Thai tech companies end up hiring young Vietnamese workers or partnering with Vietnamese companies, he said.

Thailand urgently needed to invest in human resources to support digitalisation, he added.

Kulthirath Pakawachkrilers, president of the Thai e-Commerce Association (THECA), said that as well as boosting digital education of young people, Thailand must also assist the elderly in learning digital technology. 

Although it may be too late for seniors to become advanced developers, they can still apply digital technology to create new products, services or ways of doing things, she said.

DEPA executive vice president Kasama Kongsmak said the agency is collaborating with institutions across the country to educate the next generation in programming and coding. However, the process would take time and require cooperation from all digital stakeholders, she said.

The “2021 Digital Industry Survey”, conducted by DEPA and the IMC Institute, focused on revenue and employment in the software, hardware and smart devices industries, as well as the digital services sector.

The highest growth was experienced in the digital services sector, which expanded 37 per cent to 346 billion baht last year. The survey found a corresponding increase in the number of digital workers, which rose 26 per cent from 2010 to 2020.

E-delivery and e-retail services had seen growth of 57 per cent and 44 per cent respectively as Thai society moved onto digital service platforms.
Meanwhile, the digital services workforce increased 26.55 per cent, from 66,917 in 2020 to 84,683 in 2021.

IMC executive director Thanachart Numnonda said digital services will be the fastest growing industry over the next three years, reaching 690 billion baht by 2024.

He expects the software industry to grow by around 10 per cent this year.

The value of the hardware and smart devices industry increased by 20 per cent to 386 billion baht in 2021, driven by a computer market worth over 100 billion baht.

The impact of lockdowns and working from home had spurred growth of hardware and smart devices, said IMC researcher Supachai Satjapaiboonkit.

The software and software services industries grew 13 per cent to 163 billion baht. Thai software firms were worth 121 billion baht, a 14 per cent rise from 2020.

The majority of Thai software firms were still small businesses with fewer than 10 employees, and more than 90 per cent had annual revenue of less than 10 million baht.

Kasititorn Pooparadai, senior executive vice president of DEPA’s Strategy and Security Unit, said the survey will be used to formulate a strategy to support long-term development of the digital industry.