Established in 2013, the Working Group covers a very wide field and is justified by the enormous current and future investments in Thailand’s transport infrastructure.
The road construction sector is well established in Thailand and the network is constantly being expanded and upgraded, but the underlying technologies are outdated and there is a massive need to catch up, especially in terms of traffic management.
The railway sector has been at a standstill for decades except for a few commuter lines in Bangkok. The existing SRT facilities are incredibly outdated. But fortunately, they are now on the road to modernisation, combined with a huge expansion of the network, investment in new commuter lines and high-speed train projects.
Working Principles and Objectives of the Rail & Road Infrastructure Working Group
The RRInfra Working Group sees itself as a link between the Thai government, the Thai investors, the network operators and the European business.
An important principle of our advocacy work is that our comments and advice must always be an advantage for both Thailand and European business, based on truthfulness and excellent Know-How.
Challenging, the changing political cabinets require earning trust quite often with new politicians. Therefore, personal meetings are incessant, unfortunately hampered by the Covid crisis.
The current goals of the Working Group are defined in intensive consultations and then published in the annual Position Paper. Contributors are experts from European industry and service sector as well as European and Thai universities and institutions. Main contact is the Ministry of Transport, but the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Commerce also play an important role.
Investments in the transport infrastructure have a very long lead time and realization period and the handling is extremely conservative, therefore a long-term, vigorous pursuit of the goals is required.
We not only pursue our goals in meetings but also set activities by organizing seminars at universities, participation in trade fairs, organizing workshops with different departments of the Ministry of Transport and cooperation with the German-Thai Railway Association.
Our proposals to create a Central Railway Authority and to change the Procurement Laws in a way operating costs and service life of investments may be considered at the evaluation of offers have already been implemented.
Good personal relationships allows us to help member companies to convey current wishes to decision-makers in a neutral way.