The Laws and Policies of Thailand in Supporting Electronic Commerce
posted January 14, 2014 / No Comments
By Orabhund Panuspatthna
1. Introduction
The objective of this article is to find the answer whether Thailand has such proper policies and laws to support the growth of trade via electronic commerce. In order to fulfill the objective, the author will divide the article into four parts as follows;
Part One - Overview of Electronic Commerce: This part will give meaning and illustrate the available types of electronic commerce. It will also indicate the advantages of electronic commerce, as well as, its value of trade in Thailand;
Part Two - Policies of Thailand Concerning Electronic Commerce: This part will demonstrate the policies and master plans of Thailand which concern electronic commerce;
Part Three - The Laws Relating to Electronic Commerce: The third part will review the present legal provisions in Thailand, both directly and indirectly, relating to electronic commerce in order to analyze whether these provisions facilitate and support the growth of electronic commerce in Thailand; and
Part Four - Conclusion.
Part One: Overview of Electronic Commerce
Electronic commerce is a new form of trade which has played an important role in modern trade at both national and international levels. In general term,”electronic commerce” means the dispatch and/or receipt of data message by electronic means in order to conclude a commercial transaction. This data message covers all kind of information whether expressed in form of a letter, number, sound or image. Classic example of electronic commerce is on-line trading which is buying and selling goods and providing service over electronic networks.
The reason that drives electronic commerce to become a major role player in current trade is that business traders realize of excessive benefits of electronic commerce that can be elaborated as follows:1
1. Electronic commerce changes the culture of trade from a traditional style of trade that located at one certain place of business with definite working hours into a modern style of trade. Trade in modern style can operate anytime online through electronic networks with no need to have a physical business working place since meetings between sellers and buyers are no longer necessary.
2. Businesses are better to reach their customers across border. Timezone differences can even more become an advantage.
3.Electronic commerce can reduce costs of business doing in the aspects of Both time saving and expense saving.
Electronic commerce trading can be classified into three available types2
1) Business to Business (B2B) is a type of electronic buying and selling or service providing which is done between business sectors. For instance transaction between manufacturer and exporter or that between importer and exporter.
2) Business to Government (B2G) is a type of sale or service providing which is done between business sector as one side and a government unit on the other.
3) Business to Consumer (B2C) is a type of sale or service providing which is directly offered to customers. For example buying a CD from Amazon.com is the most famiiliar example of electronic commerce of B2C type.
The survey statistic of The National Statistical Office of Thailand showed that in the year 2007, among the three types of electronic commerce trading B2C took the highest share at 72.5 percent of electronic market. B2B was the second whose share in the market was at 27.2 percent while B2G was the last of 0.3 percent share.3
The same survey also showed that the total value of online trade to the year 2007 was 427,460 million Baht. B2G type took 55.4 percent of 233,982 million Baht, whereas B2B type took 29.8 percent of 127,325 million Baht and B2C type took only 14.8 percent of 63,425 million Baht.4