IT industry growth on track

       The "Thai Khemkhaeng"(Strong Thailand) scheme will spur the IT business and help keep growth on track unless there is political unrest this year, according to CDG Group CEO Nart Liuchareon.
       The global economic downturn has caused unemployment to rise in Thailand, especially in the manufacturing and tourism sectors, but the CEO believes that the outlook for Thailand's overall economy is still promising.
       "The impact due to the uncertain political condition has been more severe than the impact of the global economic crisis," he said.
       However, he added, the IT business has not been badly hit.
       The IT growth, which was forecast earlier this year at 6 percent, will be on target unless there is political uncertainty."But if there is an incident, it will definitely affect the industry as organisations will delay their investment in IT."
       Nart noted that the government's "Thai Khemkhaeng" project, which is mainly designed to create infrastructure to help make the country more competitive, will be a key factor to encourage the IT business because those projects under "Thai Khemkhaeng" require IT,both directly and indirectly.
       The result will not show immediately,but only by the year end, he said.
       The CEO of the oldest Thai IT firm added that even though CDG may win some projects of the government, it will not boost the company's revenue this year.
       "We work this year for earning next year because the government projects basically take time to process, from contract signing to the project implementation and delivery," he said.
       The company aims to achieve some 10 percent growth this year, or 5.5 billion baht.
       The CDG Group has taken the present situation to seriously conduct an internal performance improvement. This is the right time to do it now rather than doing it during the upturn period, said Nart who is also the chairman of the Young President Organisation.
       It now comes to another big change as the group has done five years ago in organisation restructuring by splitting CDG and G-Able, but this time it is entirely about human resources management, the CEO said, pointing out that the group has aligned people to match up with their abilities.
       "We have improved those people who lack something or put them into the right job and paid more benefits for the high potential staff, there is a dimension of compensation," he said, admitting that it is a tough situation as every process is involved with people, with around 2,000 employees.