ACCORDING TO KAN, the innovations and productivity steering committee is focusing on promoting start-ups, while the legal-issues committee will push for a “regulatory guillotine”, a sweeping method of reviewing laws that was applied successfully by South Korea in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

“We spend much of our time discussing start-ups,” he said, adding that the ones the committee would focus included not only technology enterprises, but also entrepreneurial ventures in other areas such as the service industries.

He said Somkid Jatusripitak, deputy prime minister in charge of economic affairs, had give much importance to start-ups, and the government might unveil a promotional scheme called “Start-ups Thailand” late next month.

Nevertheless, to achieve the government’s target to boost Thailand’s research and development spending to 1 per cent of gross domestic product by next year, or about Bt130 billion, up from 0.44 per cent in 2014, the committee will also have to focus on encouraging big companies to increase their R&D budgets. About 70 per cent of the total R&D spending targets are expected to come from the private sector.

“We have to hinge [rely] on large companies. As they increase their R&D investments, there will be more jobs and career paths created for researchers,” he said.

Multinational companies are also being persuaded to make more R&D investments in Thailand, especially in the special economic zones, where they can engage educational institutes or invest on their own, and earn extra tax and non-tax privileges.

On top of these privileges, the committee is considering giving MNCs’ lead researchers a reduced personal-income-tax rate, perhaps as low as 10 per cent, compared with the current 35-per-cent maximum rate.

A separate plan for strengthening innovative capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises is being drafted by the Industry and Science and Technology ministries, he said.

Kan said he thought the government’s incentives were already sufficient to attract investments in R&D and innovation-related projects, as it has recently approved an increase in the tax-deduction allowance for R&D projects to 300 per cent of their actual expenses, up from 200 per cent previously.

Another key issue is unleashing the potential of researchers working in the public sector through amending their key performance indicators to provide incentives for them to commercialise their research work or to allocate their time for working for the private sector. This is because Thailand currently has only around 9,940 science and technology researchers, and only 730 of them are working for the private sector (more than 100 at SCG).

Other issues being discussed by the innovations committee include additional tax-incentive packages for venture capitalists, establishment of a “fund of funds” to provide financial support to venture capitalists and innovative projects, and setting up an agency to take direct responsibility for providing knowledge to and grooming start-ups.

For the committee on laws and government mechanisms, which Kan co-chairs with Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam, the most important job will be the introduction of the so-called regulatory-guillotine process to review and update laws and regulations that impose huge administrative, legal and political costs, estimated to cost Thailand about 5-15 per cent of GDP.

Former Bank of Thailand governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul, who also sits on the innovation committee, has agreed to chair a working committee to study and push for the implementation of the “regulatory guillotine.”

Kan said South Korea had successfully used this process to review tens of thousands of business regulations and eliminate half of them in less than a year, as part of its economic restructuring programme launched in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

In addition, the law committee will focus on amending laws and regulations in five key areas: im-migration procedures, customs procedures, Food and Drug Administration procedures, town and city planning codes, and environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes.

The amended customs laws are under the consideration of the Council of State.

To comply with the expected remaining tenure of the current military-imposed regime, the tentative timeframe of these 12 public-private steering committees is about 18 months. Each of these committees works with all relevant ministries to achieve its agenda.