‘Changing global trade trends pose new challenges, need new approaches’

Speaking on the topic of "Exploring the Dynamic of the New World Trade”, he emphasised the importance of the country's public and private sectors transforming their operational processes to meet the new robust global trade criteria.

His remarks were part of the opening speech for Than Talk forum, "Go Thailand 2024: Green Economy Landbrige, The Golden Opportunity?" by Thansettakit, a Nation Group media, on where the country will be heading next year and beyond.

Due to various uncertainties, geopolitical tensions, and the severe impact of global warming, Phumtham said that countries all over the world, including Thailand, were being forced to change.

"We [Thailand] must understand this kind of change and prepare ourselves to keep pace with the world. To address these new challenges, new practices and solutions are required," he said.

He said the new practices should be flexible enough for all Thais to keep up with.

He emphasised the need for balance, explaining that while transforming the kingdom to meet global requirements, such as the European Union's Deforestation Act and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, Thailand must find the right point where traders, exporters, manufacturers, and consumers can comfortably follow.

"Thailand will not arbitrarily and carelessly follow those Western standards. We will consider our own context and negotiate with them for the flexibility to follow at our own pace until we meet their requirements," he said.

Noting that good trade and an efficient economy would benefit the majority, the minister assured that all parties would have the flexibility to transform their operations.

Meanwhile, he urged Thai entrepreneurs, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to embrace new innovations and technologies to improve their products and services in order to meet global market demand for sustainability.

In addition, he highlighted the government's role as a facilitator for the Thai private sector to expand abroad. These roles included expanding free trade agreements, updating regulations, developing logistics and warehouses, and creating a friendly digital ecosystem.

To ensure that the ministry takes its facilitator role seriously, Phumtham said that his agency had already established nine subcommittees to advance some urgent issues, such as promoting and upgrading Thai SMEs, promoting and driving proactive Thai-China-ASEAN trade and economy, driving work towards integration in accordance with the soft power strategy, driving trade logistics policy, developing e-commerce, big data ecosystem, and trade influencers, and promoting and developing farmers' potential for commercial purposes.

Simultaneously, he pointed out that the commercial team was collaborating with the government's "Team Thailand" to implement proactive economic policies that fully facilitated trade and investment for the private sector at all levels.

At the moment, Team Thailand representatives are working together to lay the roadmap for the government to follow in order to achieve even greater success, he said.