“Thailand, as one of the world’s suppliers of IT products, should benefit from the agreement, which will be effective this Friday, as member countries will decrease tariffs and other fees for trading in these products, while helping to develop new technology and innovation among themselves,” Sirinart Chaimun, director-general of the department, said yesterday.

Trade in IT products among WTO members is worth about Bt2 trillion a year.

The WTO has finalised the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement, which should help Thailand become more competitive in the IT industry. It will create opportunities to sell to the US, the EU, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway and the other ITA member states that agreed to the deal.

The expansion will support the Thai government’s policy to move towards a “digital economy”, she said.

IT products in Thailand that will benefit from the tariff reduction among WTO members include printers and parts, printer ink, electronic circuits for automated teller machines, starters for electric motors, movie projectors, monitors, cameras and digital cameras, transformers and multifunction printers.

Thailand has been an ITA member since 1997.

Under the new ITA, Thailand hopes to be able to draw more investment to its IT industry, as the country will be able to import products to supply the industry from upstream to downstream.

Thailand should also be able to export more IT goods to other economies, especially the US and EU, with which the Kingdom does not yet have free-trade agreements.

The US imports IT monitors from Thailand, but it imposes a duty of 5 per cent, while the EU, a market for TV cameras and digital cameras, levies 14 per cent.

The ITA expansion agreement should also increase the confidence of foreign interests to invest in Thailand’s industrial super-clusters, Sirinart said.

So far, 53 economies are members of the ITA expansion agreement.

They are 28 countries in the EU, the US, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Israel, Turkey, mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand.

According to the department, trade in products covered under the ITA expansion is valued at more than US$1.3 trillion (Bt46 trillion) a year.

ITA members have traded more than 90 per cent of the total value of IT products in the world market, while the value of Thailand’s global IT-products trading is about $60 billion.

Combined initial foreign direct investment in the local IT industry is $70 billion, or 32 per cent of total FDI. The IT industry has created about 65,000 jobs for Thais.