Thailand enhances competitiveness through AEI mechanism

BANGKOK, April 30 (TNA) - Thailand, through the Ministry of Finance's Customs Department, supports the government's moves on enhancing the national competitiveness through the automatic exchange of information (AEI) mechanism. The department's director-general, Kulit Sombatsiri, on Monday presented the certificate to 112 Thai entrepreneurs whose business standard meets the AEI criteria, ensuring their safe exporting and importing of goods throughout the transport process. The AEI standard, developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), is a tax standard under which authorities of participating countries are supervised and governed on their information exchanges related to taxpayers' foreign banks and safekeeping accounts based on the same criteria. Kulit told journalists that his department has targeted to issue the AEI certificate to 500 Thai business operators by the end of this year, from 345 ones earlier set. "The AEI standard is a key mechanism to enhance and ensure safe exporting and importing of goods throughout the transport process and there are now 74 countries, including Thailand, that have adopted the AEI mechanism", the senior official explained. The senior official revealed that his department has signed agreements with the Customs authorities of Hong Kong and Korea on their cooperation based on the AEI mechanism and will sign more agreements with Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom on the same issue in the near future. The senior official said he believed that Thailand's ranking in the ease of doing business index, to be updated and announced by the World Bank later this year should be up from last year, showing the improved national competitiveness cushioned by the AEI standard. (TNA)