'Government needs to promote regulations'
SASIWIMON BOONRUANG
There is no progress in e-commerce in Thailand, in either the public or private sectors, a legal expert warns, and much still has to be done to prevent the country being left far behind and missing opportunities in international trade negotiations.
According to National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) legal expert Surangkana Wayuparb, e-commerce was getting more complex and eventually new technologies would become a major driver.
Web 2.0 would evolve into Web 3.0, and conducting business online will become unavoidable.
E-commerce does not involve only businesses, but also the general public, and that increases the value of e-commerce and requires more problem-solving by management.
FTA negotiations with countries such as New Zealand, Australia and Japan could be hindered as all have better e-commerce infrastructure than Thailand and have been ranked in the top 10 in e-commerce readiness, while Thailand was ranked only 40th.
She contrasted Thailand with South Korea, and said that in 1997 both were at the same stage and faced the same economic downturn, but today the value of e-commerce in Thailand was around 300,000 million baht while South Korean e-commerce was around $14 million, together with an Internet penetration of 70 per cent.
She said South Korea had implemented a complete broadband Internet infrastructure, so its potential was not in doubt, and if there was an argument or problem concerning e-commerce, due to dispute or fraud, there were two organisations to cope with it, the Korea Certified e-Document Authority and the E-commerce Mediation Committee, but Thailand has nothing similar.
Surangkana noted that the E-Commerce Mediation Committee so far could not perform due to the political situation.
As a result, she said, the promotion of e-commerce could not be done perfectly.
The government must accelerate the procedure of many functions including the information security standard, regulations concerning e-commerce and many other pending issues.
As a member of the E-Commerce Transaction Committee, she added that the committee had addressed the regulation on e-payment service providers and Certification Authority (CA); the first has already been endorsed and the latter was now in the process of drafting to be announced as the Royal Decree.
There was an attempt to push the information security standard and to enforce public organisations to have information security and to be examined by an external auditor.
The committee was now working on a law amendment, e-Documents and the certification of printed documents and the national repository, the legal expert said, adding that regulations would also cover e-seals, e-stamp duty and e-notary public . The e-notary public, was now being studied by the Justice Ministry.
"There are many other critical issues to be considered, including online consumer protection, online dispute resolution and self-regulation of digital content," Surangkana said.
She noted that digital content had been developed together with technologies such as Web 2.0, 3G and WiMax and thus digital content management would be one of the substantial issues. Thailand today had no national digital archive, only the financial sector has a digital archive, which had been driven by the Bank of Thailand, she said.
The E-Commerce Committee would set up an e-Document centre to keep all the electronic business documents for reference.
According to director-general of the Trade Negotiations Department Chutima Bunyapraphasara, international trade negotiations with the WTO, Apec, or the FTA had been long focused on electronic commerce, even though there was no official signed agreement.
However, e-commerce work in Thailand has been done by each organisation individually and without collaboration.
The private and public sectors should pay attention and seek benefit from international negotiations, she said.
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