Your Business and Your Life

If you are a talented information technology (IT) professional, the Asean Economic Community (AEC), which kicks off in in 2015, could widen your regional career opportunities thanks to its guaranteed free flow of skilled labour.

What will become a single market and production base now has a population of 601 million, representing an opportunity for Thailand’s software industry to export via online sales.

Even though free trade will bring tremendous opportunities, it is also threatening local software companies due to fiercer competition in terms of capital, costs and workers’ English-language capability.

“This is a wake-up call for the local IT industry, which must prepare now to compete with upcoming rivals,” said Ronnarong Poonpipat, director of the Trade Negotiations Department, at the AEC 2015 seminar organised by Software Park Thailand recently.

“IT competitiveness should top the national agenda along with improving the broadband network infrastructure in order to promote niche software exports in the healthcare and tourism industries.”

He said computers and telecommunications are two more categories that should be liberalised under an “e-Asean”.

Foreign companies from within Asean were supposed to be allowed equity participation of 70% in some Thai sectors last year ahead of the AEC, far above the present 49% limit to foreign shareholding under the Foreign Business Act.

Last year, the other nine Asean members agreed to this arrangement, but Thailand was the lone holdout due to the domestic political crisis at the time.

However, the new Yingluck Shinawatra government has agreed to comply with the policy by the end of this year, he said.

Service liberalisation will include cross-border supply, with activity conducted at a distance via any medium without meeting each other such as outsourcing or data processing.

“Equity investment will take immediate effect, while the free flow of skilled labour will start in 2015,” said Mr Ronnarong.

He said the AEC needed many parties to become involved including the Labour Ministry, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Ministry and the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC).

“There’s a lot of software demand in Asean countries, but our local providers need to be competitive enough to fight the expected influx of new foreign rivals with skilled people,” said Mr Ronnarong.

Tanit Sorat, a vice-chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries, said the AEC will be Thailand’s biggest challenge to date, one that will transform the country.

Once the single market opens, the automotive, electronic and agriculture industries among others will be keen on investing in IT, particularly software, in order to increase their competitiveness, he said.

The government needs to integrate national single windows for trade data exchange, and a national gateway will also be needed, Mr Tanit added.

Methini Thepmani, an ICT Ministry inspector-general, said the ICT minister has been meeting with the labour minister to come up with IT certification for professionals.

Asean will require certification for five professional IT positions _ systems analyst, network and systems administrator, ICT project management, information systems and network security, and enterprise architecture design and software development.

“Thailand hopes to become a certification provider,” Mrs Methini added.

Supot Tiarawut, director of the Telecommunications Research and Industry Development Institute, said Singapore and Malaysia will act as a “middle men”, attracting global technology companies to set up offices there and transform themselves into Asean companies in order to be entitled to AEC privileges.

“Indonesia and Thailand will be the top two countries that global companies will target for expansion, thanks to their large populations,” he said.

For the telecom sector, Dr Supot said the NBTC should hold the 3G licence auction on the 2.1-gigahertz spectrum by mid-2012.

Thanachart Numnonda, the director of Software Park Thailand, said smartphone users in Asean will number 41.9 million by 2015, up from 3 million in 2009.

Such prolific growth provided the huge benefit to mobile application sector.

In its Digital Economy rankings for last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit rated Singapore second in ICT competitiveness, Malaysia 36th, Thailand 40th, Vietnam 62nd and Indonesia 65th.

Mr Thanachart said this showed much room for improvement on Thailand’s part.

Suphajee Suthumpun, the chief executive of Thaicom Plc, said ICT technology will act as an enabler pushing the growth of Asean countries.

Thailand will have to improve its education system, language skills and analytical ability by offering tax incentives for skill development, he said.

Janewit Kraprayoon, general manager of True Internet Data Center, said Thailand offers a good location for data centres.