Poll:One-third of SMEs to lay off workers due to minimum wage hike

BANGKOK, April 30 (TNA) - Director of Dhurakij Pundit University’s Research Center Kiat-anant Luankaeo said Monday that a result of a survey conducted by his center shows that one-third of Thai small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are set to lay off their workers due to the daily minimum wage hike. Kiat-anant said the survey result shows that in the next eight months 38.9 percent of over 900,000 SMEs in seven pilot provinces which see an increase in the daily minimum wage to 300 baht might have to lay off workers aged under 20, who are their low-income workers, while in 12-18 months’ time, 76.6 percent of the SMEs operators would order their employees to work harder to make up for their increased labour cost. On ways to cope with the minimum wage hike, he said 61.3 percent of the surveyed SMEs operators said they would try to reduce other costs while 45.1% said they would replace their workers with machines. Kiat-anant said the survey result also shows that the minimum daily wage hike has raised SMEs’ operational costs by 16.2 percent, leading to an increase in their product prices by 13.8 percent on average. Kiat-anant said that assistance measures that have been introduced by the government to help SMEs do not entirely meet the needs of SMEs, and would only benefit one third of them. He suggested the government to work on how to manage production costs, enhance productivity, improve operational process of SMEs, explore new markets and develop workers’ skills to match with changing business structures. (TNA)