Advisory Service to the Industrial Finance Cooperation of Thailand (IFTC)

PROJECT DURATION

September 1966 – April 1976

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Industrial Finance Corporation of Thailand (IFCT), was founded in 1959 as a private development bank aiming to promote small and medium-sized enterprises by the provision of investment loans and advisory services.

From 1966 to 1975 two divisions of the IFCT – the Project Control Division as well as the the Project Planning Research and Development Division – were continuously supported by the dispatch of German advisors (one per division).

In the Project Control Division the German experts assisted the implementation and follow-up of projects, credit investigations and the assessment of insurance coverage of projects, while in the Project Planning Research and Development Division they were active in investment research, project promotion as well as in promoting liaisons with other organizations and institutions working in the field of development.

Since the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) provided substantial sums to IFCT within the framework of financial assistance, the dispatch of German experts should also support a reasonable use of these financial resources (example of technical co-operation that is embedded in investment programmes in contrast to free-standing technical cooperation, compare OECD definition).

Through counterpart training – on the job – and advisory services with regards to business policy significant results could be achieved: While before the project a commercial bank attitude was dominant within the IFCT, the German experts successfully managed to integrate macro-economic and developmental aspects into project evaluation (standardized testing schemes). Therewith – at the end of the project – the IFCT constituted the only credit institute in Thailand with the nature of a development bank.