Some logic at last
Your Sept 29 front-page article, “PM aims for ‘developed nation’ status”, is very timely and significant. It mentions some, but not all, of the factors that are presently inhibiting Thailand’s further development. Having moved successfully from “less developed” to “middle income” level, the country is stubbornly refusing to make the second jump to “fully developed” status. Thailand is well and truly caught in what is called the “middle income trap”.
A major cause of this trap is a deficiency in technological innovation. Almost all the major manufacturing industries in Thailand use imported technology. There are three factors underlying this weakness.
The first is a failure to spend enough of the national resources on industrial research and development.
Developed countries spend an average of 3% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development.
More than a half of this is spent by and in the industrial sector.
A few years ago South Korea broke out of the trap by spending more than 4% of its GDP on research and development. Thailand spends less than 0.3% of its GDP on research and development and only about one tenth of this is in industry as opposed to universities and government laboratories.
The second factor is a lack of enough capable research workers. Prime Minister Prayut has recognised this and plans to produce more suitably qualified people. But where will they come from and where will they find jobs? For sure this will take 20 years.
The third factor is that Thai graduates are very poor at forward and lateral innovative thinking. This follows from school, and indeed some university, teaching that encourages rote learning and discourages questioning whether critical, directly forward, or lateral.
For years now I have read complaints about this in your paper, but the situation has not changed. PM Prayut is right. Overcoming it will have to go back to elementary school and will take at least 20 years.
Your report is the first time I have seen a popular public recognition of the problems involved in the middle income trap. I am too old to ever see the result, but I wish the country well as at long last it faces up to the technological development difficulties facing it. ALASTAIR M NORTH