"It's like a person who suffers obesity with huge, dangerous fat and sugar in the blood and who will become severely sick one day," said Mr Banyong.
Tevin Vongvanich, chief executive and president of PTT Exploration and Production Plc, said Thailand's global competitiveness ranking had been dropping gradually each year because the country lacked innovation and did not invest much in improving human resources.
We have become stuck as a middle-income country without any improvement to be a higher-price goods exporter," said Mr Tevin.
To escape the middle-income trap and become a developed country, Thailand would need to double the country's income to more than UScopy2,500 per head per year from $5,000 last year.
Kan Trakulhoon, chief executive of Siam Cement Plc (SCG), the country's biggest industrial conglomerate, attributed low productivity and weak competitiveness to the country's poor research and development over the past decade.