TRADE CHIEF TACKLES CHANGING WORLD
Commerce Minister Apiradi Tantraporn sets strategy for the country’s export recovery despite gloomy global forecasts. Apiradi Tantraporn, the international trade veteran who has spent nearly all her working life at the Commerce Ministry, believes the international trade landscape has now completely changed. World trade now means becoming engaged in almost everything from labor, the environment and climate change to emerging formats of non-tariff rules and regulations. Like it or not, those issues are inevitable, she says, and global consumers are powerful enough to force the world’s leading department stores to withdraw products from their shelves.
“The time is ripe for all parties to adjust — manufacturers, farmers, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), industries and the ways the Commerce Ministry itself and its staff work,” says Mrs Apiradi.
The ministry has commissioned Thailand’s future trade strategy, which features greater market access, economic cooperation, more free trade agreement talks, cities in focus, niche markets and online trading. The strategy is aimed at Thailand becoming an Asean hub for trade and investment, focusing mainly on border trade, facilitating outward investment and internationalization, expanding trade in services and developing innovation-driven enterprises and smart SMEs.
The ministry is also committed to promoting value creation to upgrade export-orientated manufacturers from original-equipment manufacturers to original-design or original-brand manufacturers, promoting community markets in a move to distribute affluence to rural areas and expanding farm outlets that enable farmers to sell their produce, simply processed food products and handicrafts directly to buyers.
“The ministry, particularly through the Business Development Department, has done a lot to help small-scale retailers and wholesalers in 56 provinces to stay afloat and profitable,” says Mrs Apiradi. “Authorities have been engaged in helping them to manage stocks, accounting systems, window dressings and operating costs. This helps them to stay competitive amid the proliferation of modern trade outlets.”
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