Thailand's community businesses benefit locals

BANGKOK, May 31 (TNA) - Bangkok-based University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC) reports that the country's community businesses have benefited locals in terms of the use of raw materials of their own communities and the job creation. Thanawat Phonvichai, the university's Vice President and Director of the Center for the Economic and Business Forecasting, told journalists on May 30 that his center's recent survey of 795 samples of community businesses found that most of the random samples used local raw materials and workers at about 63.14 per cent and 87.60 per cent of the total local resources respectively. Thanawat acknowledged the finding showed that Thailand's community businesses have benefited locals at 3.75 points on average, out of the total 5 points, resulting more income and savings of local people. Thanawat also quoted most of the samples as saying that they viewed their business status was similar to last year in terms of the number of customers, sale volumes and profits, but foresaw their costs should be lower and their profits should be higher over the next six months although their sale volumes should remain unchanged. The senior academic and economist stated, however, that his center's recent survey found most of the samples, or 56.12 per cent, were labor-intensive ones and 35.59 per cent of them used both labor and small-scaled machines, while only 0.13 per cent of them adopted innovative and high technologies into their business operations. Besides, about 17 per cent of the samples were indebted, but about 53 per cent of them believed they would be able to access to financial sources by themselves over the next one year, while about 51 per cent of them wanted to seek loans to support their business operations. Meanwhile, Small and Medium Enterprise Development of Thailand (SME Bank) pointed out that the survey showed the potential of community businesses in contributing to the national economic growth, stating that the SME Bank will, thus, keep providing financial and other support to the country's community businesses, including promoting their products on its online platform, Thailandpostmart.com, and organizing relevant training programs for them. (TNA)