The Commerce Ministry aims to expand its customer base in China by cooperating with e-commerce giant Alibaba to upgrade its "Thaitrade.com" site to make it more favourable to Chinese buyers.
The move is part of the plan to promote Thai agriculture products as well as "One Tambon One Product" items among Chinese consumers, said Malee Choklumlerd, director-general of the Commerce Ministry's International Trade Promotion Department.
She said the website would be modernised to "Thaitrade Xing Fu", with an Alipay online payment option popular in that country.
The upgrade is part of a cooperation set up late last year during the visit of Thai Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak to China, meeting with Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
"To penetrate the Chinese market, we need to put all our efforts into this e-commerce project to broaden our reach. That's why we cooperated with Alibaba," said Mrs Malee.
The website is an initiative of the Commerce Ministry to promote Thai products and has 136,469 members. Of the total, 19,476 are sellers and exporters, while 116,993 members are buyers across the world.
Some 5.7 million people visit the website a year, giving it strong potential to reach a wider audience in China.
Mrs Malee said the website is expected to be a major platform to promote farm and farm-processed products from the "One Tambon One Product" scheme because it could be linked to the "Thai Smart Farmers" system.
The scheme helps Thai farmers access the market directly online, giving them insight on exact consumer demand so they can match it, she said.
Thailand ranks as the second-biggest e-commerce market in Asean behind Indonesia, with over 500,000 e-commerce users. Some 43% of the population accesses the internet, with the rate projected to reach 50% this year.
The market value of Thai e-commerce was 2.5 trillion baht last year and is expected to rise this year, said Mrs Malee.
