I’m From The Thai Government, And I’m Here To Help

With the commencement of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, the Thai government aims for the country to become the ICT hub of the region. Of course, there are critics who doubt whether Thailand achieve this, especially when competing with countries like Singapore that have gained a reputation for startups, but the government maintains it has the confidence and budget to take that title. One of the sectors that the Thai Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MICT) wants to focus on to ensure its competitiveness is software development.

SIPA, the country’s Software Industry Promotion Agency, is responsible for advocacy and development assistance with the straightforward goal of “making the Thai software industry domestically and internationally recognized.” Having been given the sizeable budget of 305 million baht ($10 million), it certainly has the resources to accomplish its objectives.

SIPA’s director is particularly determined and ambitious. Having spoken to Trairat Chatkaew, former CEO at SSC IT Group and current head of SIPA, he believes that the Thai software community’s perspective towards the AEC is wrong, and we have to change that perception in order to compete in the ASEAN market.

AEC collectivizing the local software industries into a global hub

Trairat says:

First of all, it’s not about competition. Do not look at AEC as each country’s software industries individually competing against one another. Instead, we all should look at it as an open, free market where the entire ASEAN community can work together to develop and improve the regional software industry to compete with other global communities.

Essentially, Trairat dreams of creating an AEC SIPA as he believes that ASEAN has the potential to become the world’s software development hub.

However, while the idea of creating alliances and consolidating ASEAN into one strong hub for the software industry is noble, one question arises – what if other countries disagree? There aren’t clear answers yet, but Trairat’s approach involves taking steps first and testing the waters, “SIPA would like to work with similar organizations in the other 10 countries in AEC to consider if, in fact, we all should work together or not and what will be the benefits of such an arrangement. SIPA is trying to create bilateral alliances, persuading all the AEC countries to cooperate. Together, ASEAN could be the hub of the software development.”

Even if cooperation does move forward, Trairat believes that each country must specialize further towards services and skills in which they have comparative advantages. While his assessments are open for debate, Trairat sees, for example, Thailand as the center of creative research and development with Malaysia excelling at finance management, and Singapore focusing on commerce and investment attraction. Trairat added:

I think it’s time for the ASEAN community to show to the world our potential to develop software and compete in the world market.

Thai problems

Regarding plans for the software industry in Thailand, SIPA will be putting more effort into supporting the development of digital content or embedded content in the years moving forward. As the government wants Thailand to become a center of information and communications technology (ICT), Mr. Trairat believes focusing on this area is the most efficient way of achieving such a status with Thailand’s strengths in its relatively lower cost of ICT labor and business-friendly regulations (SIPA is determined to streamline further ICT business regulations.)

Thailand has weaknesses as well, particularly with its language limitations, poor salesmanship, and the lack of cooperative associations among tech and web businesses. However, the biggest problem Thai software developers face is the lack of confidence Thai consumers have in them. Until now, the Thai software market was unregulated and unsupported, leading to the production of many poor quality products and services, cementing the poor reputation of Thai software developers. These conditions caused SIPA to step in and assist developers, it says. They aim to help Thai products compete in the domestic market, and hopefully that will provide the platform for future global competitiveness.