SCG drives R&D to build competitive edge for Thailand

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, presiding over the forum, said that R&D, especially in science and high technologies, was the key to Thailand’s economic and social strength. The government had always been on top of the topic by following up the problems and obstacles, as well as by providing the seed money into the government R&D projects to materialise the country’s development plans and beef up the personnel forte while encouraging the local and international industrial R&D networks.

“Today forum held by SCG showcases a corporate effort as a major part to foster the country’s R&D and sustainable competitive edge which would benefit everyone involved in work of supporting operations and policy establishments,” she said.

SCG’s president and CEO Kan Trakulhoon said that this national commercial R&D forum would uphold the private sector’s strong intention to practically support commercial research and development as well as to encourage and inspire local enterprises to venture more into the realm of commercial R&D.

“Throughout the past 100 years, SCG has always been conducting businesses based on sustainable development with strong focuses on innovations and high value-added products and services. R&D work has been utilised as a key driving force to increase competitiveness of the country. We then consider it very important that every stake holders pay attention to cultivate new innovations in our country. For example, the government can make it a national agenda to promote R&D culture in the country while the educational and research institutions can adapt their existing projects to meet the global community’s expectation in the future. The private sector, meanwhile, can encourage an R&D network where consumer demands meet with the scientific efforts, resulting in more value added innovations that generate actual income to further work in the future,” says Kan.

With a continuous effort to establish a true innovation-propelling growth, SCG increases its investment on R&D every year.

In 2012 SCG spent 1.4 billion baht on R&D which is one fourth of its total R&D budget to collaborate with leading local and international R&D institutions.

SCG has projected that its High Value Added (HVA) products should account for at least 50 per cent of its total revenue from sales by the year 2015. And in the next five years, SCG expects to beef up its R&D team to 1,600 people with more than 170 PhD R&D candidates, and to spend more than 5.6 billion baht on R&D.

“Currently, Thailand’s total R&D investment stands at only 0.2 percent of the country’s GDP. There are 9.5 researchers per 10,000 populations, and only 20 percent of them work in the business sector. The government has established a plan to increase R&D investment to 2 per cent of the country’s GDP, but we also need to employ those plans practically to create tangible results. I personally believe that the R&D budget should be boosted to at least 3 per cent of the country’s GDP, while the numbers of researchers should be increased to 30 per 10,000 population, and 80 per cent of those researchers are those in business sector. The R&D work should be commercialised, which means the finding from laboratory can be developed, produced, created, and transformed to products and services that serve real needs of consumer,” Kan added

On the national level, SCG’s CEO forecast that in the next 2-3 decades, the Thai industry would be moving more towards being creative, distinctive, high quality and branded with characters. Thailand should aim to become a Branded HVA Country with HVA products and services with outstanding differentiations. The country will also need to pay serious attention to the R&D of new innovations.