EEC joins hands with Huawei to prepare Thailand for digital future
The Eastern Economic Corridor Office (EECO) and Huawei signed a memorandum of understanding that aims to make Thailand a digital hub of the region besides producing a digital workforce to meet the country's emerging needs. The digital talent collaboration in conjunction with Huawei Asean Academy (Thailand) EEC branch aims to groom 30,000 digital workers within the next three years.
The MoU signing ceremony was witnessed by Supattanapong Punmeechaow, Deputy Prime Minister for Economy and Minister of Energy, and Yang Xin, chargé d’affaires of the Embassy of China in Thailand, at Siam Kempinski Hotel in Bangkok.
Kanit Sangsubhan, EECO secretary-general and Abel Deng, CEO of Huawei Technologies (Thailand), signed the MoU.
“I am grateful to the EEC for cooperating with Huawei to contribute significantly to Thailand's digital economy," Supattanapong said.
"In addition to the MoU signing, I would also like to congratulate on the opening of the Huawei Asean Academy (Thailand) EEC branch in Chonburi. The four cooperation frameworks comprise: creating a knowledge base, experts and platforms; building an ecosystem that facilitates digital development; organising trainings to improve digital and 5G capacities; building a certification programme to create a standard for the target industries. This will significantly enable Thailand to move forward to Thailand 4.0,” the deputy PM said.
Yang said: “Despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economic downturn, we are very pleased to see that high-tech-led cooperation in digital economy and innovation is increasingly becoming an important new highlight of China-Thailand cooperation. In this process, Huawei has been deeply involved in Thailand for many years. It has made every effort to promote Thailand to become the first country in Southeast Asia to have commercial 5G services. Today, the Huawei Asean Academy (Thailand) EEC branch is officially established. We believe it will help cultivate more talented personnel in communications technology management and professional techniques in Thailand, help Thailand become a data centre in Southeast Asia, and create a new model of China-Thailand digital economy cooperation.”
In collaboration with Huawei, EEC aims to organise digital development courses for students and IT-related workers to train 6,000 people within 2021 and 30,000 in 2024.
“Today marks another key milestone in our efforts," Kanit said. "The collaboration between EEC and Huawei through the Huawei Asean Academy (Thailand) EEC branch is going to combine forces which I believe would lead to digital transformation in all industries not only in Thailand but also in Asean to another level.”
Abel Deng, CEO of Huawei Thailand, thanked the EECO, adding, "Huawei believes that the key to drive digital development lies in an upskilled talent foundation. We will proactively enable Thailand to become the Asean digital hub through this MoU and the Huawei Asean Academy (Thailand) EEC branch. Together with the EECO, Burapha University, all our stakeholders and friends in the EEC, we are committed to fulfilling our mission of ‘Grow in Thailand, Contribute to Thailand’ by being a technology-leading and trusted ICT partner, proactive digital transformation enabler, and continuous social value contributor, bringing digital to every person, home and organisation, for a fully connected, intelligent Thailand!”
The MoU is seen as an important milestone for digital talent development in the EEC to support the use of 5G technology.
In 2020, Huawei helped organise digital training for government, enterprises, SMEs and startups for over 16,000 people.
