Thailand needs to improve education and protect rights of groups, especially women and lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender and intersex (LGBTI), the outgoing World Bank Bangkok office director, Ulrich Zachau says.
"Poor people and disadvantaged people in Thailand have benefited from bigger incomes and development as a result of the growth in trade in the past decades. But at the same time, there still is significant inequality, there still are many poor people and many disadvantaged people," Mr Zachau told the Bangkok Post late last month before he moved to Bogota in Colombia to take up his new post at World Bank.
Mr Zachau has been based in Thailand since 2012, as the World Bank Director for Thailand and Regional Partnerships. The position has given him a local perspective and understanding of Thai society.
A continuing challenge in Thailand is reforming education as more people should be able to enjoy a good education that gives them the skills to be as productive as they possibly can, he said.
"Great schools are concentrated in Bangkok, but outside Bangkok the performance of the educational system is weaker," he said while proposing that Finland's model of allowing students to think for themselves instead of rote learning is preferable.
Another area that Thailand needs to tackle is inequality and prejudice towards women, said Mr Zachau, who holds degrees in mathematics and economics from the University of Munich and a PhD in economics from Oxford University.
"There are groups in the society that are particularly disadvantaged relative to others and one group in Thailand is women," he said.
"When you look at educational results, delivering of services to women, if you look at violence against women, these are all issues that Thailand still faces today. Progress has been made but the remaining challenge is to turn this progress into real practices of equal job opportunity and pay."
Apart from improving equality, education and women's rights, Mr Zachau believed that Thailand should do more to protect rights of LGBTI groups.
His idea resonates in the latest report financed by the World Bank.
The bank in March released a report called "Economic Inclusion of LGBTI Groups in Thailand".
According to survey responses, discrimination and exclusion of LGBTI people still exists despite Thailand's progressive status regarding LGBTI inclusion.
Discrimination practices are prevalent when LGBTI people look for a job, access education, financial products, health care services, buy or rent properties, and seek legal protection.
For example, more than one-third (37.4%) of non-LGBTI survey respondents find it acceptable for employers to discriminate against LGBTI individuals.
Almost half (48%) found it reasonable for LGBTI people to experience some form of discrimination when seeking government services.
In terms of economies, Mr Ulrich said Thailand must prepare to deal with trade barriers as a result of trade wars among the US, China and the European Union.
"Restrictions of trade will produce losses for countries that are involved in trade wars and also other parties as well … and those who ultimately pay the price will be the consumers, it will be you and I," he said.
For the medium and long term, Mr Ulrich said he believes economies will adapt to the ongoing trade wars, because many of these goods and services will try to find alternative substitutes.
Mr Zachau also said he advocated that Thailand embraces an open trade policy.
"The World Bank Group and I personally, as a professional, we are unabashedly in favour of open trade," Mr Zachau said.
World Bank and Mr Zachau himself have advocated Thailand to ratify free trade agreements, especially the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.
Without the US on board, the treaty is now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) or TPP-11.
"This effort [to ratify the CPTPP] is continuing and about to bear fruit as countries ratify and it virtually certain to happen without the United States and it will benefit those who participate in it … we are hopeful that open trade will prevail," he said.
