Thai SMEs supported to keep pace with global 4IR

BANGKOK, September 17 (TNA) - The Thai government, through the Ministry of Commerce, has supported small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the country to keep pace with the world's Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) era currently. As part of the move, the ministry's Department of Trade Negotiations, in cooperation with the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC) Thailand, organized a seminar in Bangkok on Monday to create the awareness of Thai SMEs and to equip them with updated information beneficial to their strategic planning in order to enhance their competitiveness in the more advanced industrial era currently. Speaking at the seminar, Auramon Supthaweethum, Director-General of the ministry's Department of Trade Negotiations, said that the seminar is aimed to prepare Thai SMEs to keep pace with the complete 4IR in the future, in which advanced technologies and innovations, covering the more adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), or robotic automation, plays significant roles in the global consumption, supply chains through increasing "smart factories" and the daily life of world population, along with the development of biotechnological heredity processes. Auramon assessed that the value of the digital economies among six member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, should total about 200 billion US dollars by 2025, from about 50 billion US dollars currently, making the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) become one of the world's top five regional economies then. According to the senior official, Monday's seminar was a next step of the Thai government's measures on preparing the Thai business sector to keep pace with the 4IR, after the implementation of the Thailand 4.0 Policy over the past four years. (TNA)