The following are government policies related to seafood trade:

Fisheries Industry Development Policy: The broad policy is to maintain Thailand as one of the important fish producing and exporting country.

Increase Production: Mainly through aquaculture and expansion of high sea and deep sea fisheries that will improve fish supplies for the domestic market and for exports.

Export Policy: Improve competitiveness through efficiency along the production chain; products and quality development; obtain greater access to foreign markets through bilateral and multilateral agreements.

Road Map of Food Safety: This is an integrated policy and programme involving various agencies to ensure the safety of food products (including seafood) both for products consumed locally and for export.

Branding: Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOA) promotes "Q" logo for food products, including seafood, which have passed quality and food safety certification in order to achieve the national goal to establish Thailand as "Kitchen of the World". Branding strategy has also started for cultured shrimp whereby the government promotes Code of Conduct (COC) and Good Aquaculture Practices (GAP) labelling, the former has a higher standard, thus fetches higher price in the market. DOF has established cooperation with Carrefour supermarket group to promote this programme.

Fisheries Policy

Department of Fisheries (DOF)  is the main focal point for almost every aspect in the fisheries sector from resource management up to marketing and inspection. Other agencies like MOH (Thai FDA), Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives are regulating bodies for policy matters.

The DOF is the competent authority for controlling fish export and inspection of imported shrimp and tuna.
Department Export Promotion 

The import and export data are maintained, processed and stored by the DOF with information provided by the Customs Department.

   
ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA)

Like Malaysia, Thailand has strong commitment to reduce/eliminate tariff on products traded with ASEAN under AFTA. The tariff reduction is undertaken through the Common Effective Preferential Tariff Scheme (CEPT). Thailand's CEPT rates package for fisheries product is 5% for almost all products except for fresh/frozen skipjack, tunas and sardine which have zero (0%) tariff.

Within ASEAN, free trade negotiations with India, China, Japan, S. Korea, Australia and New Zealand are underway to create full free trade area by 2015 or latest by 2020.

Early Harvest Programmes with China, effective since October 1, 2003, only covers agriculture products (HS 07 and 08) which are entitled to 0% tariff.

BIMSTEC

Thailand is also in the process of establishing closer economic cooperation through BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative of Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) with South Asian countries namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Bilateral Trade Agreements

Thailand has concluded and signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Australia and New Zealand and with Japan the framework has been established. Early Harvest Programme Agreements with China and India have also been signed covering various products, but not on fishery products.

Thailand's Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)

The Bureau of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, Department of Trade Negotiations under the Ministry of Commerce is responsible for matters related to WTO.

There are common issues on fisheries in WTO shared by the government and private sectors namely rule of origin, TBT and market access agreements. As Thailand imports a lot of raw material for reprocessing, especially tuna and skipjack, "harmonized" and flexible rule of origin are very important issues for the country's seafood industry, especially in obtaining greater access in developed markets such as the EU and US.

Thai fisheries products also often face tariff and non-tariff barriers in the global markets. Even though Codex standard is used by WTO as international standards, but certain countries unreasonably use stricter technical and quality requirements.

Even though generally, bound tariff among the WTO member countries are relatively low, especially for unprocessed seafood products, but tariff for processed and ready-to-eat as well as value-added products are usually still high.

Bound tariff for most of fishery products (fresh & frozen) in Thailand is 5% and only certain products have higher bound tariff such as live fish (30%), canned seafood (30-40%). Under the government export scheme, raw material imported is entitled to get zero tariff.

More information on Thailand and WTO

• Ministry of Commerce 
• Thai Frozen Food Exporters Association
• Thai Food Processors Association
• The Federation of Thai Industry