GOVERNMENT

MFEC says public sector slowing down

SASIWIMON BOONRUANG

The uncertain political climate has caused a slowdown in goverment IT projects, according to MFEC president Siriwat Vongjarukorn.

As a result, the local IT services firm will shift its focus to the banking and financial sector as well as prepare to collaborate with a foreign partner to enter overseas markets as a long term strategy.

Siriwat also said the company would look more to the private sector than the public sector. "Most of the revenue, around 70 percent of it, will be generated by the private sector," he said, adding that MFEC had re-structured its industry teams by turning four government teams into three teams focussed on the banking and financial sector.

"We will rely on projects in the telecom, banking and finance sectors that really need investment and problem solving, and we will be able to grow our market share from those investments, he said.

Siriwat admitted that there are already IT companies that dominate the banking market, however, he said MFEC also had its own strengths. There are already a few banks that the company was negotiating with, and the projects being proposed are concerned with Basel II compliance and security solutions, for which the banks require new infrastructure.

The company would focus on niche segements around security and identity management, regulatory compliance and risk management as well as data warehousing and business intelligence.

In the telecom sector, he said MFEC would do projects that help customers to save costs, get better payment from their subscribers and offer new value-added services.

As a long-term strategy for MFEC, Siriwat said that the company needed a partner to jointly conduct research and development.

"The potential to start R&D by ourselves in order to compete with foreign companies today is very hard," he said, pointing to the "Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2006" awards staged by Deloitte Hong Kong, which contained only one Thai company among the 500 firms.

"Thailand does not have a competitive advantage in the regional market, so we need to lay out the most perfect infrastructure to support a joint-venture," he said, adding it was also a reason why MFEC is focussing on the US organisation "TRACE certified" and the Good Corporate Governance initiative of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Three potential overseas markets for MFEC in the long term are Japan, the US and Europe.

He also pointed out two major weaknesses of Thai companies: the inability to do marketing and competitive technologies.

"When the timing is right, we will joint-venture to upscale and to expand in the overseas markets," he noted.

He said foreign markets would be more focussed on services, which could also involve infrastructure, applications and security. He added that without such plans, Thai companies would suffer.

Bangkok Post

Last Updated : Wednesday April 11, 2007