General Chatchai Sarikulya, Minister of Commerce, presided over the opening ceremony of business negotiation between the trade delegations of North America, Europe, Latin America, and Thailand exporters, on Thursday, December 11, 2014, at conference room

 

 

General Chatchai Sarikulya, Minister of Commerce, after presided over the opening of “Trade Delegations of ASEAN and Asia Travelling to Thailand for Trade Negotiation Program” during December 11 – 13, 2014, he said that businessmen from ASEAN, China, Japan, India, and Australia, totaling more than 160 people accepted the invitation, meantime Thailand prepared approximately 220 private sector companies for business matching and trade negotiation at Department of International Trade Promotion, Ministry of Commerce, and led business delegations to visit potential businesses to promote trust and confidence in the quality of Thai products and services declared their readiness to be a manufacturer of quality products since the year 2014 onwards.

               “The trade delegations are groups of department store, retailer, supermarket, and importer, while Thai entrepreneurs are groups of food products around 120 companies and non-food products 99 companies. It is expected to drive Thai products dominate more market shares in supermarket and department store in ASEAN and Asia, resulting in motivating and propelling Thailand’s exports in the first-second quarter of fiscal year 2015. And most importantly, it will promote networking between Thai entrepreneurs and ASEAN and Asia entrepreneurs who are decision-makers. This will be beneficial to Thailand in organizing commercial and marketing activities in the future.” said Gen. Chatchai.

               Potential products and services of Thailand in this target market included food products, instant food, rice, canned vegetable/fruit, beverages/juices, sauces/condiments, dried vegetable/fruit, household products, hotel equipment, giftware, and fashion products. Many groups of buyers would come to visit factories and commercial districts in important industrial markets such as Bobae market, Sriworachak market, and more. The largest travelers was 100 people of Asian groups, followed by 40 people of China and Hong Kong.

               Office of International Trade Promotion was assigned to implement urgent activities that would have tangible results on motivating and propelling the country in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2015. Firstly, the program of trade matching between Thai exporters and leading importers in North America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Russia-CIS was occurred during the past December 1-3. The number of buyers’ arrival to Thailand on December 1, 2014 showed successful achievement of this program. There were 41 buyers/importers and 116 Thai product makers/exporters with continued orders within 1 year totaled 11,810,770 US dollars (about 367 million baht).

               “From the report of the Department of Trade inquired exporters, it was found that they wanted this kind of program to be held again because they could meet the real keys importers. And the buyers commented that snack products are likely to be more popular with consumers in Europe and America. If the product is presented in an interesting form with a once-eat-all package and convenient to carry along, it could penetrate snack market for children can bring it to school.” said Gen. Chatchai.

               According to feedback of buyers, it was found that the trend of global market is focusing on health care, so healthy food is popular and have high growth potential. They also suggested that if several food was improved its production process, such as using useful oil for cooking instead of using palm oil, it would be able to expand much more market.

               Food products getting attention included rice, instant food, snack, Beverage, Halal products, organic products, vegetable/fruit and healthy food. Organic and healthy food products received attention from many international importers, due to the current market trends, consumers around the world were paying attention to health care.

               The trend of medical supplies and rubber gloves order was high; the importers approved that the presented products were good quality as exporters who dealt in this business were product makers who planted rubber trees until processed it to rubber gloves for medical use. In addition, Brazil importers who were interested in household products, furniture, and products made from wood, such as vases, lamps and bowls, travelled to visit manufacturers’ facilities at Nakhonnayok and Chiang Mai, and they were currently under negotiation and more likely to place orders