Bangkok--26 May--KASIKORNBANK
KASIKORNBANK has cooperated with the Technology Promotion Association (Thailand-Japan) (TPA) to launch the SME Business Diagnosis Project (“SHINDAN” project), to strengthen local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for sustainability amid the economic recession, and to prepare them for proactive moves when the economy starts to recover. More than 1,000 SMEs in Thailand are expected to participate in this project.
Mr. Pakorn Partanapat, Executive Vice President of KBank, said in a recent press interview that the severe economic recession, at present, has badly affected SME businesses, due to their limitations in terms of capital and managerial skills to continue to run their businesses while solving the problems. To help SME proprietors to carry on with their businesses, in the short and long-term perspectives, KBank has teamed up with the Technology Promotion Association (Thailand-Japan) (TPA) to establish the SME Business Diagnosis Project (“SHINDAN” project).
The project is under an aim of assisting local SME entrepreneurs in analyzing their business potential and standing, in order to discover the problems and implement proper preliminary solutions for production cost reduction, productivity upgrading and retention of their workforce to strengthen their businesses. Such information will be useful in the creation of future business plans for long-term sustainability of their businesses, in a more systematic way.
SMEs eligible to participate in this project must employ at least 10 workers, but no more than 200 workers, together with having fixed assets or investments of 5-200 million Baht. There must be shareholders, with Thai nationals holding more than 50 percent of shares, running their core businesses in production or trading activities in Bangkok and surrounding 26 provinces in the East and West. KBank anticipates that 1,000 SME entrepreneurs will participate in the project.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sucharit Koontanakulvong, Vice President for TPA, added that KBank is renowned as a leader in credit support and development for SME businesses. TPA, therefore, has cooperated with KBank in initiating the “SHINDAN” project to enable SME proprietors to analyze strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities in their businesses. They can use such knowledge to improve, resolve problems in and develop their businesses. Our expert teams will diagnose SME businesses in five areas, i.e., management, marketing and sales, production, human resource management, as well as accounting and finance.
TPA is an agency trusted by the Department of Industrial Promotion to implement several industrialization projects, under the plan to rehabilitate and enhance economic confidence. These consisted of three sub-projects, i.e., training sessions for 10,000 proprietors, diagnoses of 2,500 business enterprises, and the provision of in-depth consulting services for 500 proprietors. In the business diagnoses, TPA has provided services to more than 1,400 business enterprises, 99 percent of which were satisfied with the diagnostic results; 96 percent of them were able to apply the diagnostic results and recommendations for successful improvement of their businesses, and 83 percent of them requested further diagnoses by TPA.
Any SME proprietors interested in participating in the “SHINDAN” project can contact the K SME Care Knowledge Center, Floor 2, Chamchuri Square Center, at telephone number 0 2160 5203-4, or at www.ksmecare.com, from now until September 2009.