Jul. 11–The government is preparing to establish a new venture capital fund to invest in high-potential small- and medium-sized enterprises in an effort to improve their competitiveness.<\/p>\n
The fund is expected to invest between one billion and two billion baht in joint ventures with SMEs over the next few years, according to Chakramon Phasukvanich, secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Board.<\/p>\n
The National Competitiveness Development Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, approved a framework for the fund yesterday, saying eligible businesses would need to generate sales of 10 million baht or more each year.<\/p>\n
Mr Chakramon said Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak would act as chairman of the fund’s board, which would be responsible for determining the investment policy and screening of SMEs.<\/p>\n
He said the fund would not overlap with the one-billion-baht SME Venture Capital Fund set up by the Democrat-led government and managed by One Asset Management, as the existing fund focused on smaller SMEs.<\/p>\n
Government spokesman Sita Divari said most local SMEs still lacked the ability to access sources of fund and the new venture capital fund would help them in terms of not only financial assistance but also marketing strategy development and competitiveness enhancement.<\/p>\n
Mr Sita said the committee also asked Dr Somkid to supervise the restructuring of special-purpose industrial institutes, as some of their responsibilities were considered overlapping.<\/p>\n
In the initial stage of the restructuring, four industrial institutes under the Industry Ministry will be transferred to the Prime Minister Office. They are the National Food Institute, Thailand Automotive Institute, Thailand Textile Institute, and Thailand Productivity Institute.<\/p>\n
The fund’s board members include the permanent-secretaries for finance and industry; Pansak Winyarat, chief policy adviser to the prime minister; Chai-Anan Samudavanija, a former chairman of Thai Airways International; Boonklee Plangsiri, chief executive of Shin Corporation; Kongkiat Opaswongkarn, president of Asset Plus Securities; chairmen the Federation of Thai Industries and Thai Chamber of Commerce; president of the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand; and Vivat Vinicchayakul, director-general of the SMEs Promotion Office.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http:\/\/www.bangkokpost.com<\/p>\n
(c) 2003, Bangkok Post, Thailand. Distributed by Knight Ridder\/Tribune Business News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jul. 11–The government is preparing to establish a new venture capital fund to invest in high-potential small- and medium-sized enterprises in an effort to improve their competitiveness. The fund is expected to invest between one billion and two billion baht […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}