Competitive Capacity and Readiness of Thai Small and Mediums Enterprises for Entering the ASEAN Economic Community

Abstract

The regional economic integration of fully collaboration of the ASEAN Economic Community
(AEC) in 2015 is a major propeller that opens great opportunities for freer trades and investment among
the ASEAN country members. During this remaining short period of time, small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs), which are vital to the economy of the country because they are a major source of
employment whereas there are limitations in doing the business for several reasons, may have been
negatively affected by the AEC rather than large enterprises. This academic article therefore is chiefly
aimed at reviewing the literatures and researches related to the potential and readiness to enter the
ASEAN Economic Community of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand. The paper has
presented the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises both in ASEAN and Thailand, the
concept of regional economic integration, the importance of ASEAN and the necessity of developing
the cooperation within ASEAN towards an ASEAN Economic Community, the master plan of ASEAN
connectivity, the impact of ASEAN as an opportunity and threats for Thailand, the preparation of Thai
businesses for entering the ASEAN community. More importantly, as a result of the study, this paper
proposed significant recommendations on how entrepreneurs will be able to effectively draw
advantages from the AEC, provided the ways that SMEs should prepare for in order to be ready for
higher competition in the region, as well as the ways to enhance the capacity and potentials of
SEMs of Thailand by the public sector for effectively entering the ASEAN community. Before full
development of AEC, SME’s entrepreneurs, despite of a lot of limitations on doing business, need to
accelerate acquisition of knowledge related to various aspects of the AEC and to prepare for the
arriving opportunities and increasing competitiveness. Entrepreneurs should continuously appraise their
organizational and product readiness in order to know what weaknesses and strengths there are to be
improved. Opportunities and threats should also be analyzed to understand external conditions
affected to their business. Preparation for readiness increases opportunities to strengthen competitive
capacity both in domestic businesses and ASEAN markets, very effectively leading towards becoming a
successful part of fully development of ASEAN economic community in the very near future.