The agency expects to invite more than 300 tourism agencies, both domestic and international, to participate.

The ToTOP platform includes hotel channel management, a business-to-business agent, and a system of codes for tourist destinations.

Hotel channel management is an e-business platform and mobile application that provides information on hotel reservations and tourism supply chains such as souvenir shops, car-rental services and The B2B agent will allow small and medium-sized tourism businesses to offer their services online domestically and internationally to expand their client base, enhance their productivity and improve the quality of their service.

The code system will make it easy for business and customers to access and search for tourism information and destinations by using abbreviations. For example, WSASTH is Thailand and WSASTHHKT is Phuket.

“Not only will the platform increase the [ability] of tourism businesses to connect with their business partners and customers, it is easy to use and integrate with customers globally. It will also support new lifestyles and behaviours of customers in the digital world,” Supachai said.

The report says only a quarter of wealth managers offer digital channels beyond e-mail.

This is despite the fact that 69 per cent of HNWIs globally and 77 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region use online and mobile banking. More than 40 per cent go online to review their portfolio or investment markets. More than one-third globally use online services for portfolio management.

Vilaiporn Taweelappontong, partner for PwC Consulting (Thailand), said CEOs of traditional wealth-management firms needed to accelerate their efforts to integrate technology into their business.

“Wealth management is one of the sectors most vulnerable to digital disruption today,” she said.

“Wealth managers currently rank among the slowest adopters of digital technology in the global financial-services industry. This tells us that the sector remains focused on a conventional way of servicing clients and that major changes need to take place.”

Demand among HNWIs for finance-related technology is similar for both younger and older HNWIs. The exception is portfolio management, where under-45s are more interested in managing investments online.

More than half of HNWIs surveyed globally (55 per cent) and nearly two-thirds in the Asia-Pacific region (62 per cent) believe it is important for their financial adviser or wealth manager to have a strong digital offering. For those under 45 and in Asia, the number rises to 64 per cent.

HNWIs are increasingly aware of automated technology in the investment advisory space. More than a third of HNWIs in the Asia-Pacific region who do not currently use robo services that cut out the middleman would consider using them in the future.

Overestimating digital capability

Even so, players in the wealth-management sector seem to be oblivious to their technology inadequacies. Some rate themselves as digitally sophisticated, when the only service offer to clients is a website.

Two-thirds of wealth relationship managers globally do not consider robo-advisers a threat to their business. Moreover, they say their clients do not want digital functionality.

Only 34 per cent of HNWIs in the Asia-Pacific region are likely to recommend their current wealth manager to others. This falls to 23 per cent among US$10-million-plus (more than Bt348 million) clients worldwide.

Vilaiporn said the industry was acutely vulnerable to digital innovation from fintech incomers who can offer wealthy clients slick and highly personalised ways to manage their assets, and leverage real-time data continuously to make better financial decisions.

PwC’s report finds that “investment performance” and “range of products and services” are the most important aspects for all clients.

However, “rapport with adviser” is much less valued, at 41 per cent in the Asia-Pacific region versus 50 per cent globally. Some 77 per cent of clients in the region rank “investment performance” as the most important, against a global figure of 62 per cent.

In PwC’s view, to survive, wealth-management firms must accelerate efforts to adopt a comprehensive digital infrastructure that integrates every aspect of their activities and corporate culture, from the back office to how they service clients and market new prospects.

They should also harness the potential of digital to realise greater efficiencies, manage costs and advance their core client proposition by drawing on a much wider range of available data. They should be willing to partner strategically with fintech innovators to deliver technological solutions at the speed the market expects.

As for Thailand, Vilaiporn said some wealth-management players had started to make progress over the past few years into better use of technology and analytics to enhance the client experience.

Even so, the broader industry largely remains in its infancy in adopting digital technologies. If wealth managers miss this growing trend, they risk losing market share.

“You may see that large brands have already occupied most of Facebook’s newsfeed,” said Kampol, who is chief executive officer of iTopPlus, a digital marketing agency.

His firm offers digital marketing and website development services to small and medium-sized enterprises that are mostly B2B (business-to-business) and are larger than micro-enterprises, most of which are B2C (business-to-customer).

The company, which is one of the four Google SME Premium Partners in Thailand, expects its Google advertising sales to grow by 40 per cent this year.

Chief marketing officer Praewpilai Chinsakchai said the average rate of Google’s search keywords in Thailand was currently about Bt20 per click and the highest was Bt300. Since Google adjusted its search algorithm in March, the click rate of some keywords has skyrocketed from Bt70 to Bt220.

Kampol said: “It’s like a good location – the good places have their prices increase over time.”

ITopPlus will this year target industries that sell high-value products such as real estate, education and manufactured goods, since many of them have not yet started to do online marketing.

The company also foresees an opportunity to develop mobile sites for enterprises since Google has announced a plan to introduce an algorithm that will exclude websites that are not mobile-ready from its search results.

“Thailand has about 400,000 websites, of which about 250,000-300,000 are likely not to be mobile-ready,” Kampol said.

ITopPlus has 8,000 clients, 85 per cent of them using its website development services, and the rest buying online advertisements. A total of 60 per cent of its Bt200-million annual revenue is derived from advertisement sales and the rest from website services.

For the past two years, the group has expanded into large corporate customers through its affiliated firm iTopSpark as well as setting up iTopClasses to provide online marketing courses and training. Praewpilai said iTopSpark had increased its customer base from 10 in the first year to about 40 at present.

“This year our target is to increase the number of customers by 60 per cent and to double our team [headcount],” she said.

ITopSpark’s customers include Kasikornbank, the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology, L’Occitane, Pruksa Real Estate, the Electronic Transactions Development Agency and Garmin.

ITopSpark says it strives to be a performance-based digital partner for corporate customers, offering a full range of services from strategic planning to online advertising technical skills and data analytics. It recently opened a new department to provide online research service.

Since 2014, iTopClasses has offered six courses, with more than 250 participants. By the end of this year, it will open three more courses on Google Apps for Work, Google Apps on Mobile for Business, and YouTube for Business. It also provides digital-marketing training for organisations.

However, Apiradi said her ministry needed to study carefully the procedure for legal action against the six individuals as it is a sensitive case and involves a number of agencies.

The ministry said it should be able to complete all the documentation this week and then the paperwork would be ready for the case going to court.

A senior source from the Foreign Trade Department said the department was carefully studying previous corruption cases, focusing on the Klong Dan scandal as an example, as the department lacks experience in dealing with legal action involving corruption charges.

The department is discussing the matter with the Legal Execution Department and other relevant agencies so that the court action will be seen as transparent. The defendants should not be able to bring a claim against the government officials involved in this case, the source explained.

However, although the ministry is proceeding with the court case, the politicians and former government officials alleged to be involved could appeal against the verdict before their assets are seized.

The alleged G2G rice scam took place when Yingluck Shinawatra was prime minister. Officials were accused of backing a deal to sell 6.2 million tonnes of rice from government stocks. It was found that the rice deal was not genuine and led to a loss of more than Bt20 billion to the state.

Suwanna Sombatra-ksasuk, chief of legal and policy affairs at the Issara Institute, said the NBTC should be one of the independent organisations.

However, under the proposed new law, it would have to report to the upcoming National Digital Economy Commission as well as the Information and Communi-cations Technology Ministry.

This makes it look like the watchdog will be just another government agency, she said.

Supot Tiarawut, adviser to the rector of Chulalongkorn University, said the bill reduced some levels of scrutiny of the NBTC working process that are mandated by the existing law.

He disagrees with the clause in the bill that would allow the NBTC to seek ways to compensate state agencies for returning their unused spectra for reallocation. These agencies should not be paid off, as they obtained their spectra from the now-defunct Post and Telegraph Department free of charge and without having to bid for them.

Supot also disagrees with the clause that opens the way for awarding frequencies via other methods than an auction.

“The auction model is the best way for Thailand, but the bill offers more options to acquire a spectrum, including the ‘beauty contest’ method,” he said.

Takorn Tatasith, secretary-general of the NBTC, has said he expected the NLA to finish the process of vetting the bill this year.

The range of improvement is expected to expand significantly in the second half of this year, he said.

The JCCB surveyed business sentiment from May 23 to June 15 by mailing a questionnaire to 1,705 of its members, which drew responses from 26.9 per cent or 459 companies.

The major concerns raised to the government include the prolonged stability of the political situation and continuation of the government’s economic stimulus measures, especially the development of public infrastructure and the grant of monetary measures to boost the economy.

“For external factors, they are worried about the world economic difficulty, particularly the fluctuation of oil prices and currencies,” said Mitsumata, also the new president of the Bangkok branch of the Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro).

In the first six months of this year, companies reporting that their business performance was improving increased by 5 percentage points to 35 per cent from the previous term.

Companies reporting deteriorating performance decreased by 6 percentage points to 28 per cent from the second half of last year.

In manufacturing, business sentiment weakened in the textiles segment, but strengthened in the food and chemical industries.

For the second half of this year, companies forecasting their business performance improving increased sharply by 13 percentage points to 41 per cent, while firms anticipating deteriorating decreased from the previous survey by 11 points to 21 per cent.

In manufacturing, business sentiment is anticipated to decline in steel and non-ferrous metals, while increasing in general and transportation machinery.

According to the survey, companies anticipating better sales this year increased by 9 percentage points to 54 per cent, while those anticipating a more than 20-per-cent increase in their sales slipped by 2 percentage points from 13 per cent in the previous survey to 11 per cent.

This is quite a contrast from last year, when companies reporting an increase dropped 5 percentage points to 45 per cent.

Companies reporting more than a 20-per-cent increase in their sales last year remained unchanged at 13 per cent.

Mitsumata said that regarding the Thai government, the predominant response from the Japanese companies operating here was the promotion of economic measures, especially in the development of public infrastructure (57 per cent), followed by stability of the political situation (56 per cent), customs-related systems and their implementation (43 per cent) and development of infrastructure in the Bangkok metropolitan area (41 per cent).

Despite the plunge in oil prices, 42 per cent of the Japanese companies said there was no impact on their business activities. However, 8 per cent said there was a positive impact.

Only 3 per cent said they had a negative impact, and 8 per cent said the negative impact was slight.

For potential export markets in the future, the predominant response was Vietnam (39 per cent), followed by Indonesia (32 per cent), India (28 per cent), Myanmar (25 per cent) and Cambodia (16 per cent).

Among the top 10 export markets, seven are in Asean. The others are India, Japan and the United States.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had asked her to proceed with the orders and she then told the DFT to carry them out, a ministry source who requested anonymity said yesterday.

These six persons have the right to appeal the orders to a court within 90 days of the date of receipt.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission has indicated that there are grounds to demand compensation from these six persons over the Bt20-billion G2G rice deals.

They are former commerce minister Boonsong Teriyapirom, his then-deputy Poom Sarapol, former secretary to the Commerce Ministry Weerawut Wajanaphukka, former DFT director-general Manas Soiploy, his then-deputy Tikhumporn Natvaratat, and the DFT’s former director of foreign rice trade, Akharapong Chuaikliang.

Meanwhile, the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) said the junta might need to consider invoking Article 44 of the interim charter to fast-track the release of low-grade rice in the government’s stockpiles to industrial users in order to clear out all inventory quickly.

That would help quickly reduce inventory storage and related costs, Nipon Poapongsakorn, a distinguished TDRI fellow and head of a study on the issue, said during his presentation of the paper to the public.

Of the 9.7 million tonnes of rice remaining in the state’s granaries, about 4.6 million tonnes is estimated to be of poor quality or substandard. This substandard rice needs a special mechanism to facilitate effective management and release.

All the stockpiles should be completely cleared out within two years to avoid inventory and other costs, which run about Bt18 billion per year, the study says.

The government should release its rice on a regular basis such as twice a month to complete the release in two or three years before the rice starts deteriorating, it says. No government should intervene in the price mechanism of any kind of farm product and keep products in storage, to avoid any related costs or losses.

The TDRI study was funded by the Agricultural Research Development Agency. It mainly focused on which is the best way to release rice at the least cost and with the least impact on rice farmers.

Pramote Vanichanont, honorary president of the Thai Rice Millers Association, said at the event yesterday in support of the recommendation that Article 44 would enable the exemption of some rules, which would allow agencies to clear out the low-grade rice quickly.

The government should draw up new ways to strengthen the rice industry, otherwise governments would have to subsidise rice sales every year, he said.

In a subsidy programme, the Yingluck Shinawatra government pledged 34.5 million tonnes of paddy rice, of which 18.07 million tonnes was sold.

The State Railway of Thailand is expected to open bidding for the projects next month and construction will likely start in February, Kobsak Pootrakool, vice minister at the Prime Minister’s Office, told reporters.

The proposed 25.9-kilometre overground and underground Dark Red and Light Red lines will connect northern Bangkok to the city’s eastern suburbs and to the city centre.

The planned construction period is 36 months for both lines with nine stations, with expected completion in 2019 and services in 2020.

As part of the Mass Rapid Transit Master Plan in Bangkok, there are two Red Lines.

The Dark Red Line runs from Thammasat University’s Rangsit Campus to Mahachai in Samut Sakhon province, while the Light Red Line runs from Salaya in Nakhon Pathom province to Hua Mak in Bangkok.

Both pass through Bang Sue, which will act as a connecting hub to the MRT system.

Yesterday’s approval follows the nod for several rail lines in the traffic-jammed capital this year.

“Once this project is completed, it will change the lives of people in Bangkok,” Kobsak said.

He said that for the Hua Mak line, about 170,000 trips per day were estimated.

Government Spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said two plots of land would be expropriated in Phaya Thai district to make way for the Red Line’s construction and about 1,000 households were expected to be affected.

He said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha had expressed concern about this, asking relevant parties to proceed with care, particularly in terms of compensation.

The Transport Ministry expects large infrastructure projects to boost economic growth to 3.5 per cent this year, adding about 0.3-0.5 percentage point.

Fitch Ratings said this month that there had been a lag in infrastructure development in Thailand since the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis compared with neighbouring countries. It expects infrastructure investment to increase over the next several years as the government prioritises such development.

The Bank of Thailand in June kept its 2016 growth forecast for Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy at 3.1 per cent.