Abstract
The study of health dimension and the development of small and medium scale industry (SMIs) has 4 objectives. Firstly, it is to review the situations and the trend of SMIs development towards production, employment, and consumption. The second is to review the development plan of policy, laws, promotion and support policy towards SMIs development. The third is to specify the analytical and health impact assessment framework of SMIs development. The last objective is to reveal and get feedback of setting this analytical and health impact assessment framework on SMIs development. Besides, the study aims to specify the framework of SMIs policy development in which it affects people’s health.The study uses the Health Impact Assessment (HIA) approach as the tool in order to specify the scope of factors that affect health. The methodology of the study includes literature review, the interviews with concerned organizations and five case studies; those are foods and product manufacturing industry, sub-contract production, rice mill industry, the industries affected urban environment, and ceramic and pottery industry.According to the monitoring report on Thailand’s SMEs in 2001 by the SMEs Promotion Office, it is found that during the year 1994 to 2000 SMEs had a 40% proportion of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The value was approximately 3.6 to 4.9 thousand billion Baht a year. The production sector had a 25% proportion in the SMEs Gross Product.In 1999, there were totally 99,568 SMIs’ manufacturers; 4,057 manufacturers were medium industry and 95,511 manufacturers were small industry. More than 40% of these firms were in the North-East, the next ranks were 18.3% in Bangkok and 13.7% in the North. More than half of all firms was foods and beverages industry. The other main industries were metallic product industry, non-metallic product industry, and machinery and equipment industry. The employment in SMIs was about 1.928 million labours: 57.0% of the total amount in manufacturing sector. In this figure, more than 78.5% was the employment in small industrial firms.The framework of SMIs development policy of Thailand has been stated in all National Social and Economic Master Plan. It is more emphasized in the government of Chatchai Chunhawan and has been pushed into practical work in the government of Taksin Chinnawat. Until 1997, the SMIs development was only a part of the industrial development. The SMIs was expected to support large scale industry in the production and to be input material suppliers. After the economic crisis in 1997 the SMIs development has been supported with many effective economic measurements. Besides, the SMIs development policy aims to (1) initiate the development of supported industries, and connect them to large scale industry development, (2) create employment for a number of labours in non-agriculture sector, (3) create the locals income, and (4) promote SMIs to play an important role in Thailand’s economic growth instead of large scale industries that are affected by the economic crisis.Before the economic crisis the process of SMIs policymaking was not in clear figure. After the crisis, the government’s policy plays its role in the SMIs development clearly. It is operated through the operations of concerned government’s organizations. It is also opened to private sector to become participants of continued policy development. Meanwhile, the laws concerned SMIs development accordance with 4 stakeholders; producer, labour, consumer, and environment; are most related to producer merely. The laws related to labour and consumer are most about the protections, but the laws related to environment are in general enforcement; not specific to the SMIs.From the review of the situations and the trend of SMIs development towards production, employment, and consumption and the review of the development plan of policy, laws, promotion and support policy towards SMIs development, the study hereby proposes 2 aspects of the analytical and health impact assessment framework on the SMIs development policy.In which way does the development policy aim to benefit for health?What are the continuous effects of the development and what are the results?In addition, there are 4 basis principal that should be considered in long term;the equity of accessibility and using policy, the stakeholder of each policy must be concernedthe fairness of resources distribution from using the policy in which it could reduce the unequal social and economic structurethe impacts of using policy towards health rather than the target to the economic growth onlythe policy-makers and people affected by policy should be co-developers of evident based and knowledge
