Thailand for suggestion to open services sect to Indian pros

Pallab Bhattacharya
Sep 28, 2010
(PTI)

Thailand has said it welcomes the suggestion for a bilateral approach to open up the services sector to Indian professionals and that it will be much faster and easier.

"We are open to the idea of bilateral negotiations with India on movement of Indian professionals into Thailand. In fact, such an approach will be much faster and easier," Thailand Deputy Permanent Secretary (Foreign Secretary) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Surapit Kirtiputra told a group of visiting Indian journalists.

His comments came in reply to a question about concerns in India that the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN) does not seem keen on a liberalised services sector.

Surapit said bilateral discussions on the services sector could help decide on the segments which India and Thailand were willing to open for each other.

His remarks come in the midst of tense negotiations between India and ASEAN on Free Trade Agreement in the services sector.

Government and private sector sources in Thailand say while Indian professionals will be welcome in Information Technology and engineering sectors, most of the ASEAN countries, including Thailand, is not in favour of opening up the health and education sectors to India.
India is banking on the agreement with ASEAN, comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Vietnam and Singapore with a combine market of 600 million people, to balance the scale tilled in favour of the powerful economic grouping in the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) in goods.

The size of the combined services sector in ASEAN is estimated to be of the order of nearly USD 200 billion, in which India has a very small share.

While many Indian textile engineers are present in Indo Rama''s units in Thailand, techies from India would be welcome in Thailand, said sources in the Board of Trade in Thailand.

One reason why not only Thailand but also many other ASEAN countries do not want an integrated approach to movement of professionals across the region is that they do not want to go for a wholesale opening up of the services sector to each other but are willing to enter into negotiations with India bilaterally in the areas of their requirement.

However, for India, it is the huge market across ASEAN that makes the services sector pact a win-win situation rather than separately approaching the individual member-countries each of which is small. .