Two state banks and state agencies have joined with the global leader in e-commerce Alibaba in setting up a scheme to promote Thai small and medium-sized enterprises abroad through the e-commerce platform.
SME Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of Thailand (Exim Bank) and the Industrial Promotion Department have agreed to assist the first 20 high-potential SMEs to penetrate the business-to-business (B2B) export markets with help from Alibaba.
These 20 pilot companies that have been selected from the two banks' clients will be allowed to take e-commerce courses and learn how to use the e-commerce platform with Alibaba's staff free of charge. They will get the chance to study the customers data of Alibaba to better help them understand their demands.
"After that we will let these SME owners decide themselves whether they will go abroad through Alibaba's platform or not, because using Alibaba's channel to export will entail more costs than using the B2B platform by themselves," said SME Development Bank's president Mongkol Leelatham.
The targeted 20 pilot firms are those selling innovative products, which must have a shelf life of at least one year. Their financial and accounting management must also be at an appropriate level.
"SMEs in provincial areas are our focus as they have a lot of potential but lack marketing knowledge and opportunities compared with those in Bangkok," he said.
The pilot project is aiming to inspire other SMEs to expand their markets overseas through B2B.
"There are at least 300,000 SMEs across the country that have the potential to connect to business operators in other countries via e-commerce platforms. We hope we can encourage these groups to join us in driving the country towards Thailand 4.0," said Mr Mongkol.
Currently there are 24,000 SMEs out of 300,000 that have the potential to go to export markets directly and around 44,000 that can do it through local distributors.
"This is because the export-import documents are very complicated," said Mr Mongkol. "Only those who are experienced in documentation for exports and imports can manage it by themselves. The e-commerce platform will reduce the complications stemming from documentation but the exporters also need to adjust themselves in terms of goods delivery as they should be able to send merchandise within 24 hours."
Pisit Seriwiwattana, president of Exim Bank, said B2B is totally different to the business-to-customers (B2C) model used by online sellers, as they do not need to worry much about documentation.
The University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC) has also joined the scheme and is providing the training venue.
The UTCC hopes it will be able to get at least 20,000 SMEs to participate in Alibaba's e-commerce training programme within 12 months. It also aims to see a success rate of at least 10%.
Currently, Alibaba has around 600 Thai companies using its platform.