New GTZ Executives Continue to Support Thai SMEs with Added Focus on Energy

There have been a few replacements within the Thai-German Programme for Enterprise Competitiveness’s seconded GTZ management team. During August, Mr. Juergen Koch (now in Abu Dhabi), Mr. Burghard Rauschelbach (at Head Office) and Mr. Rudolf Rauch (in New Delhi) left Thailand at almost the same time and were replaced by two new GTZ staff members. Mr. David Oberhuber is now the new GTZ Thailand Country Director and Mr. Torsten Fritsche is the new Resource Efficiency and Renewable Energy Director.

Mr. Oberhuber has been working with GTZ for exactly 12 years. With a background in political science and law, he has been involved as a technical advisor in several economic reform projects in Eastern Europe as well as in countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) – Armenia and Kazakhstan. He has also overseen regional projects dealing with EU enlargement, regional economic promotion, and cohesion policies. Furthermore, he has designed projects and implemented administrative partnerships between German governmental bodies and their counterparts of EU accession countries. Up to 2004, he was responsible for GTZ projects commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi).

Before moving to GTZ Thailand, he was the Head of the "Economy, Finance, Infrastructure" section within GTZ which is responsible for all BMWi; Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF); and Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs (BMVBS) projects. When asked why he is interested to work in Thailand, he replied "Thailand is a modern and advanced country currently in transition. It plays an important role in a very dynamic region. So, it's not only a challenging job, but after many years in Berlin, it is also a very interesting opportunity for my family and me to live and learn about a new culture, especially such a unique one as Thailand’s."

Mr. Fritsche, by background, is an engineer specializing on environmental technologies. In the past, he has worked in various engineering fields focusing on water and waste management in Belarus, Thailand and Zambia. He was in Thailand in 2000 working on waste management issues and the feasibility of constructing and operating biogas plants at Thai schools. Before joining GTZ in 2005, he worked for a German consulting company and oversaw projects in the field of environmental technology (with a focus on waste management) in Tunisia and Kosovo. At GTZ he has been responsible for infrastructure and environmental projects in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Mediterranean. His projects included the Railway Bosporus Tunnel Project in Turkey, where he worked with the Turkish Ministry of Transport, and a wind farm project in Romania. The first thing Mr. Fritsche told our newsletter team was "When we left Thailand after 2000, my wife and I wished to come back here one day again, it's really a nice country. I'm glad that I have the chance to continue my work on resource efficiency and energy issues at such a large scale."