Thailand has made impressive progress over the past decades, but needs a new model of growth to move forward and achieve its development objectives. On the one hand, strong growth enabled the country to join the group of upper middle-income economies in the early 2010s and to perform well in many areas. Poverty has plummeted and well-being improved considerably, notably with respect to health and education. On the other hand, few regions have fully benefited from growth and economic development has taken a toll on the environment. According to Volumes 1 and 2 of the Multi-dimensional Review of Thailand, the country needs to tackle regional inequality, improve multi-level governance and better manage water resources and disaster risk in order to achieve more inclusive and sustainable economic growth.
This volume of the Multi-dimensional Country Review (MDCR) builds on the results of the second phase of the MDCR and provides concrete actions for policy implementation. These actions could help achieve the three transitions that the country needs to move to the new level of development: moving towards a more regionally balanced growth path, simplifying multi-level governance and improving the management of water resources and disaster risk. The report moreover provides a scorecard for tracking policy implementation. To make actions as concrete as possible, the Action Plan focuses on the North of Thailand, one of the fastest growing, most diverse and yet poorest regions of the country.
The Action Plan is the result of a policy dialogue that mobilised key stakeholders from the North. Participants to workshops in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai prioritised issues and proposed actions to operationalise recommendations of the earlier MDCR reports.
Creating successful strategies is a process of trial and error that requires the collaboration of many players. The following actions should thus be read as a guide to such a process. The scorecard in Chapter 4 of this report proposes a set of indicators for measurement of performance throughout the process. In combination this action plan and the scorecard can thus help to transform the North of Thailand into a “Policy Lab” where innovative actions and ideas for regional development can be tested.