He also hoped exports at the end of the year would not drop from the present rate.

Somkid asked the Finance Ministry to study additional measures to spur the real estate sector. He said foreign investors have been consulting him every week about investing in Thailand, where they believe the economy has remained strong.

Related story:

Thai economic growth remains fragile as GDP expands just 2.4 per cent

While 53 per cent of workers surveyed believe automation will significantly change or make their job obsolete within the next ten years (only 28 per cent felt this unlikely), the majority, 61 per cent, were positive about the impact of technology on their day-to-day work, and 77 per cent of people would learn new skills now or completely retrain to improve their future employability.

However, opportunities and attitudes vary significantly by an individual’s level of education. Location, gender and age also play a part.

Degree-educated respondents are the most optimistic about technology and their future employment prospects – even though they believe their current job is likely to change significantly or be displaced.

Conversely, over a third (34 per cent) of adults without post-secondary school education or training say they are not learning any new digital skills compared with 17 per cent of college graduates.

Those workers without education or training beyond high school are also less likely to be offered such training opportunities by their employers (38 per cent are getting no opportunities compared with 20 per cent of graduate workers). They are also more worried about the impact of technology on jobs, with 17 per cent saying they are nervous or scared.

“The mismatch between the skills people have and those needed for the digital world is fast becoming one of the world’s most important problems. While technology will likely create as many jobs as it displaces, they will be very different, and people need the skills to adapt. There’s a huge appetite among people to learn, but the opportunities to do so are not evenly spread. These disparities are only going to get more extreme without serious attention from governments, NGOs and businesses,” noted Richard Oldfield, Global Markets Leader at PwC.

Men are more likely than women to think that technology will have a positive impact on their jobs and improve their employment prospects. They are also more likely to be learning new skills (80 per cent of the men surveyed say they are doing so versus 74 per cent of women).

Likewise 18-34 year-olds are more optimistic about the digital future than any other adult age group. They are also getting more training opportunities. For example, 69 per cent of 18-34 year-olds feel positively about the future impact of technology on their jobs, compared with 59 per ent of 35-54 year-old, and 50 per cent of those aged 55 and over.

Only 18 per cent of 18-34 year-olds say are being given no opportunities to learn new digital skills by their employer. For 35-54 year-olds and those aged over 55, the figures are 29 per cent and 38 per cent respectively.

People are split on the skills they want to learn. Similar proportions want to become proficient in a specific technology to those wanting to become better at learning and adapting to different technologies.

“Not everyone needs to be able to write code but they do need to understand how technology will change the world of work and how it can benefit them. Upskilling is about creating a culture of continuous learning and curiosity, and this is something many organisations are grappling with. Too often assumptions are made about the type of worker who should be upskilled, and a vicious cycle emerges whereby people are left behind,” said Carol Stubbings, Joint Global Leader for People and Organisation, and partner at PwC UK.

With people facing longer working lives, upskilling is all the more important. Improving digital skills could also help improve productivity growth, which remains low despite trillions of dollars of tech investment each year.”

Looking across the markets surveyed, workers in China and India are by far the most upbeat about the impact of technology (even after adjusting for cultural bias), despite being the most likely to believe their jobs will change significantly.

Workers in these regions are getting more opportunities to upskill: 97 per cent and 95 per cent respectively are being given these opportunities by their employers. On the other hand, workers in the UK and Australia say they are given the least opportunity to learn new skills. They tend to be less positive about the impact of technology.

Whether people live in rural or urban locations also has a bearing on their attitudes toward technology. For example, 67 per cent of city dwellers believe their job prospects will be improved by technology (48 per cent in rural areas), and 80 per cent are being given upskilling opportunities by their employers, compared with 60 per cent of workers residing in rural communities.

Richard Oldfield, Global Markets Leader at PwC, added:

“Our research gives a glimpse into the opportunity gap for adapting to the automated world. Given the people completing our survey are more likely to be digitally aware, the picture across the wider population is likely to be more pronounced,” Oldfield added.

The survey builds on PwC research showing that 30 per cent of jobs are at risk from automation by the mid-2030s based on analysis across 29 countries.

Meanwhile, PwC’s 2019 annual CEO survey shows that the availability of skills is a top concern for 79 per cent of chief executives.

“Today, the emergence of automation, AI and other technologies has inevitably affected how we work and our employees. Over the next decade, we’ll see even more demand for new skills. This is a major issue for both the government and for top corporate leaders,” said Vilaiporn Taweelappontong, Consulting Lead Partner at PwC Thailand.

“At PwC, apart from investing in new technologies, we’re also trying to upskill our people, which is one of our main priorities. We want our people to have digital skills no matter the title they possess, and we are making sure that no one is being left behind. On top of that, we would like to urge the government and all relevant sectors to support upskilling the Thai workforce, especially in the manufacturing industry. These efforts will help Thai workers meet their potential in line with the national strategy to embrace digital technology.”

The Upskilling Hopes and Fears research was carried out by Opinium for PwC. In total, 22,094 adults were surveyed in 11 countries: Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, the UK and the US. At least 2,000 adults were surveyed in each market in July this year.

Exports and imports of goods, however, continued to  contracted.

The state think-tank said that on the production side, the agricultural sector increased by 1.5 per cent in contrast to a fall of 1.3 per cent in 2019Q2 while the non-agricultural sector increased by 2.3 per cent, slowing down from a rise of 2.6 per cent in 2019Q2. The deceleration was the result of a 1.5 per cent fall in the manufacturing sector attributed to a drop of export-oriented industries and a slow-down in domestic demand. However, the services sector increased by 3.8 per cent, led by tourism, namely accommodation and food service activities; wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles; and transportation and storage, which grew by 6.6 per cent 5.6 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively. On the expenditure side, government final consumption expenditure, and gross fixed capital formation increased by 1.8 per cent and 2.8 per cent, compared to a rise of 1.1 per cent and 1.9 per cent in 2019Q2, respectively. Private final consumption expenditure grew by 4.2 per cent, following a rise of 4.6 per cent in 2019Q2. For the external sector, exports and imports of goods decreased by 0.3 per cent and 7.7 per cent, respectively. After seasonal adjustment, the Thai economy in 2019Q3 expanded by 0.1 per cent (QoQ SA).

Private final consumption expenditure grew by 4.2 per cent,in comparison to a rise of 4.6 per cent in 2019Q2, contributed largely to an expansion of durable, semi-durable and non-durable items with a rise of 1.8 per cent, 1.9 per cent and 3.4 per cent, compared to a rise of 5.7 per cent, 3.0 per cent and 4.6 per cent in 2019Q2, respectively. Service items rose 6.4 per cent, accelerating from a rise of 4.7 per cent in 2019Q2.

General government final consumption expenditure increased by 1.8 per cent, accelerated from a 1.1 per cent rise in 2019Q2. That acceleration was attributed to an expansion of compensation of employees and purchases of goods and services with a rise of 1.2 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively, whereas social transfer in kind dropped by 3.6 per cent .

Gross fixed capital formation grew by 2.8 per cent, accelerated from a rise of 1.9 per cent in 2019Q2. Expansion came from private investment with a rise of 2.4 per cent, compared to a rise of 2.1 per cent in 2019Q2, due mainly to a 3.1 per cent expansion of machinery items. Public investment accelerated by 3.7 per cent, compared to a rise of 1.4 per cent in 2019Q2, driven by an increase in construction and an improvement in machinery items .

Changes in inventories at current market prices in this quarter decreased with avalue of Bt12.7 billion . Gold, rice, cassava, and crude oil all saw a decline in stocks.

Goods and services balance at current market prices recorded a surplus of Bt435.1 billion , sourced by surpluses in goods and services with the value of Bt244.5 billion and Bt190.6 billion, respectively, added the NESDC.

The department’s deputy director-general, Sura Petpirun, added that Thailand needed to develop its own technology to extract the rare earth as some of the minerals are rare in Thailand. The minerals from the extraction can be used as a primary mineral source for high-tech industries.

He said the department had developed the technology to recycle some magnetic parts in electronic devices to bring out the rare earth neodymium magnet, which could be used by the next-generation automotive industry, smart electronic devices, and integrated medical industry.

The department has also developed the technology to extract pure silver for serving the automotive and electronics industries.

The department has also conducted research and development on recycling packaging made of aluminium foil.

Next year it aims to recycle parts of solar panels.

The department estimated that there will be 150 tonnes of expired solar panels per year during the next five years. Thailand should be well prepared to deal with this to prevent the possible impact on the environment.

He added that two or three recycling companies were keen to invest in the technology to recycle solar panels.

The department has already opened courses to provide technology knowledge to recycle solar panels to interested private companies.

An expired solar panel is composed of 0.06 per cent of silver. A panel weighing one tonne will yield around 300 grams of pure silver after the extraction process. The extracted silver is valued at Bt20 per gram.

Apple, Walt Disney and other big tech and media giants are increasingly turning to outlets like TV, billboards and newspapers to promote their new online products.

Spending on broadcast and cable ads by streaming services jumped 19% to $209 million over the past 10 weeks, according to data from researcher ISpot.TV. The biggest spender was Apple, which launched its Apple TV+ service on Nov. 1. It accounted for almost one-quarter of the spending, followed closely behind by Amazon.com, with $37 million in TV ad purchases.

“Television is the easiest place to find people who like TV,” said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence for GroupM, the ad buying unit of WPP.

Disney, which introduced its new Disney+ streaming service on Tuesday, relied heavily on its own networks for marketing. Ads ran on ESPN’s Monday Night Football, while ABC aired the first episode of the service’s new “High School Musical” series the Friday before the launch. The company also promoted the service on its radio network and in the hotel rooms at its theme parks.

ESPN correspondents even drew flak for gushing about Disney+ rather than talking sports.

Ricky Strauss, the head of content and marketing for Disney+, called it the “biggest synergy campaign ever in the history of the Walt Disney Co.”

Pluto TV, the streaming startup acquired by Viacom in March, blanketed billboards and buses in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York this year with ads for its service. Pluto is free for consumers and relies on advertising for revenue. The company said it wanted to reach ad buyers in those cities.

Even traditional ads can have high-tech flourishes. Billboard operator Outfront Media Inc. used cameras and augmented-reality equipment to make it rain squids at bus stops in New York last month to promote the new HBO series “Watchmen.” The premium cable network will be the key part of a streaming service that parent AT&T is launching in May.

“The streaming services know they have to break through with consumers,” said Bob McCuin, chief revenue officer for Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc., another billboard operator that said its business had seen a “measurable” uptick in demand from online video services.

Normally this would be the season broadcast networks take out ads to promote their new fall shows, but lately streaming services seem to be snatching up key locations in spots such as New York’s Times Square. That will likely continue as awards season heats up and online services look to promote films that could be Oscar winners.

A New York Times special section on holiday films last Sunday, for example, included six full-page ads for Netflix and Amazon movies. A Los Angeles Times version this week had seven such ads.

Netflix actually purchased billboards on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles to tout its programming last year. But now that it’s established, it’s not advertising as aggressively as some streaming upstarts.

While overall marketing expenses at the streaming pioneer rose 20% in the first nine months of this year, to $3.5 billion, the company has been cutting back in the U.S.

Data from the research firm Kantar Media suggests Netflix’s domestic budget was down about 38% in the first half of the year, as the company focuses its marketing on other countries, such as India.

“Netflix is a more of a mature brand,” said Manish Bhatia, chief executive officer of Kantar’s North America media division. “What we’re seeing with Netflix and Hulu is they’re pulling back a bit because they already have strong brand recognition.”

Not every streaming company is all-in on traditional advertising. Dazn, the sports streaming service based in London, used no traditional media to promote a boxing match last Saturday between two YouTube personalities, Olajide Williams, aka KSI, and Logan Paul. The social-media stars promoted the fight heavily on their own channels and Dazn ran its own three-hour, pre-fight show for free online.

Joe Markowski, Dazn’s executive vice president for the service’s North America business, said 25 million watched for free online, leading to an uptick in paid subscriptions for the service. “This was a huge brand awareness play,” he said.

E-commerce giant Alibaba said sales on its online shopping platforms reached a record 268.4 billion yuan ($38.28 billion,Bt1.1 trillion) on Nov 11, or Singles’ Day, marking a year-on-year growth of about 25.7 percent. JD.com hit 204.4 billion yuan from Nov 1 to 11, and Suning’s order volume increased by 76 percent year-on-year during that day.

Going online

The annual shopping spree has seen a growing community of online shoppers, expanding further into different age groups and tiers of cities.

Over 500 million consumers shopped on Alibaba’s major e-commerce platforms this year, increasing by some 100 million over one year ago, data from Tmall showed.

Among them, consumers born after 1995 accounted for about 30 percent, while those above 50 years old reported the highest growth rate, rising 42 percent year-on-year.

JD.com saw the per customer transaction in third-tier and lower-tier cities grew 130 percent during the Nov 1 to 11 period, with their orders making up over 80 percent of the total.

The growth in online shoppers is partly due to the emergence of social e-commerce platforms, which offer subsidies or discounts to encourage the invitation of new users and group buying.

“Online shopping is already part of the lifestyle of Chinese people, be them young or old, urban or rural,” Alibaba Executive Chairman and CEO Zhang Yong said at the “Observing China” forum held Thursday, which aimed to analyze new economic trends.

Going diverse

Along with the growth of Chinese consumers’ purchase power, consumption demands are diversifying in terms of brand preference and categories.

Over 200,000 brands worldwide joined the festival on Tmall. Among the platform’s 299 brands with sales for each brand beating 100 million yuan on Singles Day, tens of them were fresh players, said Zhang.

While big foreign brands continued to reap big during the shopping festival, many domestic brands, especially in smartphones and apparel, are winning more consumers.

Services consumption is also rising. Door-to-door beauty care, luxury product maintenance and other services were popular on e-commerce platforms during this period.

Liu Qiao, dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, predicted services consumption to make up about 60 percent or more in China’s total consumption by 2035.

Going digital 

As Chinese consumers’ shopping preferences and habits are changing, brands, especially those in manufacturing, should innovate their production and operation to boost the supply chain efficiency, said Manny Maceda, worldwide managing partner of global consultancy Bain & Company.

AliResearch head Gao Hongbing said that digitalization is the way to gain deep understanding of consumers, develop tailored products and services, handle swarms of orders and ensure fast delivery and other post-sales services.

Via a big data platform that tracks real-time orders and inventory as well as an online-plus-offline retail strategy, domestic fashion brand PEACEBIRD raked in over 900 million yuan in sales on Nov 11.

Other than information technology (IT), digital technology (DT) will be a key infrastructure to enterprises’ future success, Gao said.

Chinese firms’ spending on digital transformation has expanded over a threshold by accounting for 51 percent of their total IT expenditure this year, a recent report by market intelligence firm IDC and Chinese IT company Inspur showed.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201911/17/WS5dd0a77fa310cf3e35577d7f.html

“The multilateral trade system — in which 164 countries follow a unified trade order through the WTO — has steadily been weakening,” said Je Hyun-jung, a senior researcher at KITA. “If the US refuses to appoint a new member of the Appellate Body of the WTO in December, this will further weaken the function of international dispute resolution and bring significant changes to the global trade paradigm,” the report said.

As the US is not very favorable to the WTO and continues to refuse to appoint a new member, there are currently only three members necessary to form a minimum panel. The terms of two of them expire in December this year and the other ends in December 2020. If the US does not appoint a new member, the WTO’s ability to resolve disputes will, in fact, become paralyzed from December.

“As the demand for new trade rules increases due to changes in trade patterns and the growth of emerging markets, a new era of a multilayered trade system will begin with regional trade agreements and sectoral agreements among various nations,” the report said.

Mega free trade agreements, which include massive economies such as the US, China, the European Union and Japan, have recently been concluded or entered into force. In December last year, the Comprehensive and Progressive Pacific Rim Partnership Agreement, involving 11 countries, including Japan and Singapore, came into effect. Earlier this month, leaders from 15 Asia-Pacific countries, including South Korea, China and Japan, reached an agreement on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.

“With the weakening of the multilateral dispute resolution process through the WTO, trade remedies are likely to be abused and protectionism based on national security is likely to continue,” the report noted.

Je said South Korea, which is highly dependent on trade, should focus on developing strategies to read and respond to changes in the global trade paradigm.

“Korea should strengthen its trade status and promote high-quality FTAs with key emerging economies by establishing solidarity with midsized nations and lead the creation of new trade rules,” she said.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20191115000605

Representatives from both companies have make enquires and wanted to hold talks with related ministers, he said, adding that they were told to hold meets with officials of the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society.

“It is a good sign that global IT giants are showing strong interest in Thailand”.

Somkid held talks with Finance Ministry’s executives today on the global economic situation. Thailand has to be well-prepared to deal with the declining global economy, he said.

Domestic consumption, Somkid said, showed signs of improvement in October, reflecting success of “Eat, Shop, Spend”, the ongoing economic stimulus package.

Central bank governor Veerathai Santiprabhob said the economy would expand 3 per cent this year. The impact of the US-China trade war had hurt manufacturing, investments, exports and employment. “We are starting to see reduction of working hours and overtime jobs,” he warned.

He, however, pointed to positive factors next year which would drive the economy. Public spending on infrastructure investment is expected to be on track after delay in spending this year. Private investment is expected to rise due to increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which was a blessing from the trade war that had forced many investors to relocate their production sites from China to Thailand, according to Veerathai.

“So far, the trade war has had only a slight impact on the Thai economy because the country has ample buffer — a high current account surplus and foreign exchange reserves,” he explained.

In the first nine months, Thailand ran a current account surplus of $26 billion while FDI rose to $8 billion, he said.

Investors see baht-denominated assets as safe haven, leading to capital inflows and appreciation of the baht, he said.

The central bank recently issued a series of measures to prevent the baht’s rapid rise.

Pipat Luengnaruemitchai, assistant managing director at Phatra Securities, said there were many risk factors next year. Uncertainty remained high due to the impact of the trade war, Pipat said on Thursday at a seminar entitled “Thai Economy 2020: Looking Ahead”, hosted by the Thammasat Economics Association. Thailand also will face a decline in the labour force as the country is now an ageing society.

Consumer spending next year will continue to come under pressure as people’s incomes are already impacted by slow economic growth and weakening investment, he said.

“Looking ahead to the medium and long-term, risks will increase significantly due to the trade war and global geopolitics, Those factors will have a huge impact on the global economy, and technology disruption also will have a negative impact on the economy,” Pipat warned.

The baht is expected to rise further against other currencies after appreciating about 20 per cent in recent years.

“The continued appreciation of the baht will further erode severely Thailand’s competitiveness,” he said, adding, a stronger baht will make Thai products more expensive than those of its competitors.

Amornthep Chawla, senior executive vice president at CIMB Thai, predicted that economic growth next year would be between 2.5 to 3 per cent driven by tourism. The market believes that the trade war will drag on, probably for 10 years, as the United States does not want China to become the number one global superpower, he said. US elections next year could boost Thai exports to 2018 levels after an estimated contraction of 2 per cent this year.

He added that he had pondered on this matter for a long time.

The premier made the remark after a meeting with the Board of Trade of Thailand on Thursday (November 14) on the issue of promoting tourism.