The private sector has welcomed the government's idea to promote the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) as an engine to drive Thailand towards the 4.0 era of high technology and innovation.
Dhanin Chearavanont, chief executive of agribusiness conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group, said Thailand 4.0 is a good policy to bring sustainable growth to the country.
However, the government and the private sector need to adjust to match the changing and improving situation.
"It is good that the government is trying to push forward the Thailand 4.0 policy," Mr Dhanin said. "However, the government also has to prepare some measure to help resolve some problem if the higher technology and innovation would produce more supply than demand and that would create another problem."
He suggested that as Thailand moves into the 4.0 era, businesses should improve themselves to be able to equip themselves with advanced technologies, higher efficiency and higher investment budgets in order to lower production costs.
According to the Industry Minister Uttama Savanayana said the government has set a framework for the EEC, and expects the laws to govern the EEC to be approved and implemented by the middle of this year.
He said the EEC will help create new investment value of up to 1.5 trillion baht within five years, from both the government and the private sector.
Businesses have been warned of the possible shortage of skilled labour as Thailand still invests very little in research and development (R&D) to improve the quality of its labour force.
Kan Trakulhoon, the former president and CEO of Siam Cement Group (SCG), said Thai businesses should adapt themselves to match Thailand 4.0 by investing more into R&D in order to improve the quality of the labour force to match higher technology and innovation in the future.
He said Thai companies invested only 0.6% of total new investment each year, worth more than 500 billion baht.
This is well below the 4% level of R&D investment seen in developed countries.
"Our investment in R&D is still very low and the government aims to raise the number of R&D investment of Thai companies to be around 1% of total new investment in the near future," Mr Kan said.