Four National Strategies to Be Used to Move Thailand Forward

(23/01/2013)

The Government has announced four national strategies to be used by various government agencies to move the country forward. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra presented the national strategies to Cabinet members, senior officials, and provincial governors at a seminar, held on 22 January 2013 in Bangkok. The seminar also discussed budget allocations for the 2014 fiscal year. The Prime Minister said that the strategies were worked out at a recent brainstorming session in Pattaya, Chon Buri province. The present situation is that Thailand has been upgraded from a low-income country to a middle-income country. In the first strategy, the Government will focus on capacity-building to enhance Thailand’s competitiveness in the long run for sustainable growth. In so doing, the country might develop further, to become a higher-income nation. The second strategy seeks to reduce social disparity between low-income and high-income earners in the country and provide greater opportunities for the people, based on economic, social, and political equality. The third strategy emphasizes the “green growth economy.” In this strategy, the Government will seek to promote the people’s quality of life and environmentally friendly growth. In the fourth strategy, the Prime Minister said that she wanted to see a balance of the three strategies by adopting His Majesty the King’s wise advice on the Sufficiency Economy. In this regard, adjustment would be made in all areas, especially in national administration. The Prime Minister called for networking among various agencies, with the use of national strategies as guidance. She explained that, in order to boost growth in tandem with environmental conservation, budget allocations would place an emphasis on infrastructure development, increases in productivity, and human resource development for citizens of better quality. Various obsolete rules and regulations must be changed, so that the Government’s way of working would gain more recognition internationally. The Prime Minister said that the Government’s 16 urgent policies, aimed at increasing the people’s income, reducing expenditure, and providing them with greater opportunities, are benefiting all groups of people. She said that efforts to restore confidence in Thailand had led to an increase in national tourism income to 1.4 trillion baht and tourist arrivals to 22 million in 2012. Because of strong growth, all plans have to be adjusted to cope with the new situation. In response to the national strategies, the Prime Minister pointed out that priorities would be placed on such issues as preparations for the ASEAN Community, education reform, infrastructure investment, land management, and natural resource rehabilitation. She urged everyone to work together, so that people would earn more and enjoy a better quality of life and the country would become a center of economic connectivity in this region. As a result, social disparity would ease and Thailand would have good potential for competitiveness.