The Board of Investment (BoI) plans to hold more business-matching events to help raise joint investment by 5-10% from some 1,000 matching companies it created last year, says the BoI Unit for Industrial Linkage Development (BUILD).
BUILD director Wirat Tatsaringkansakul said new investment from business matching in 2016 totalled 34 billion baht and is expected to be substantially higher this year.
In 2017, he said the BUILD unit would focus on innovations to be adapted in all industrial sectors, especially the food processing industries for which the government has just assigned the BoI unit to promote.
"We will focus on innovations that could be adapted to farm and farm processing products that will help make Thai farmers be smart farmers," he said.
He added the unit will encourage Thai companies to do more research and development to create new innovations and adapt them to all industries in order to create added value and bring the country forward into the Thailand 4.0 era.
"What we aim for now is to encourage Thai industries to develop their own brands rather than act only as original equipment manufacturers, said Mr Wirat.
To rev up innovation, he said the unit will work together with all Thai universities and educational institutes, linking them to private firms to encourage them to jointly conduct R&D with an eye towards product development, said Mr Wirat.
He said BUILD's duty is to connect those companies that want to invest, cut red tape and help connect the government with both local and foreign investors.
Currently, the unit has around 10,000 companies that have applied for BUILD projects, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises, said Mr Wirat.
On business matching, the BUILD will focus on Japanese investors -- the biggest foreign investors in Thailand.
The BoI aims for 650 billion baht in new investment this year, up from 550 billion for 2016.