The government has set an ambitious goal to raise the country's standing in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business (EODB) ranking, reaching the top 10 by 2022.
To reach that level, both public and private sectors need to work closer together, says Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow.
Mr Supattanapong said over the past five years, Thailand has improved many areas to facilitate the ease of doing business, including efforts to streamline the approval process for doing business, the adoption of digital systems in government services, the improvement of rules and regulations to catch up with changes in the business environment and the initiation of a host of infrastructure developments as well as the Eastern Economic Corridor.
Such efforts played a role in lifting Thailand six places to 21st out of 190 countries in the 2020 rankings, he said.
The country scored 80.1, slightly below Malaysia (ranked 12th) with a score of 81.50 and Singapore (ranked 2nd) with a score of 86.2, according to the latest EODB report released in October 2019.
Thailand's overall score in the 2020 report inched up by 1.65 percentage points from the previous year.
Thailand improved on two indicators: dealing with construction permits, which ranked 34th with a score of 77.3, up from 67th with a score of 71.9 in 2019; and protecting minority investors, which ranked 3rd with a score of 86, up from 15th with a score of 86.
Mr Supattanapong said the government is committed to continuing to improve the ease of doing business this year. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha at the cabinet meeting on Nov 17 ordered all related agencies to speed up improvements in the ease of doing business.
Onfa Vejjajiva, secretary-general of the Public Sector Development Commission, said the World Bank skipped the 2021 EODB edition because of the pandemic.
Ms Onfa said the government wants a collaboration between public and private sectors to develop Thailand's National Digital Trade Platform (NDTP) to facilitate export and import procedures. It is also focused on the development of the national single window (NSW), which already links data among 37 state agencies and 18 banks. The NSW is to be linked to the NDTP and the Asean Single Window, she said.