Thailand joins ITU Thai

Government concluded an agreement with ITU to lead the business management
training programme within the Asia Pacific centre of excellence (ASP CoE)
network.

With the signing of this agreement, the CoE programme has now successfully
established all five Nodes in the Asia Pacific region, as envisaged at a meeting
in Bangkok last October. The other functioning nodes in the region are located
in the Islamic Republic of Iran (for Spectrum Management), Malaysia (Rural ICT
Development), Pakistan (Policy and Regulation) and Republic of Korea (Technology
Awareness).

Under the agreement, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology
of Thailand will provide the space, facilities and resources as well as key
experts for the training programme. The curriculum, which will focus on various
business and financial aspects of telecommunication / ICT in the Asia and
Pacific region, will be jointly developed with CoE partners. ITU will provide
seed funds for the hiring of experts and their travel for a period of 18 months
and will monitor and evaluate the programme upon its completion.

The agreement was signed on 6 September 2007 by Sue Lo-Utai, Acting Permanent
Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology of Thailand and
Sami Al-Basheer Al-Morshid, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Development
Bureau, in the presence of Sihasak Phuangketkeow, Ambassador and Permanent
Representative of Thailand to the United Nations Office and other International
Organizations in Geneva, and ITU Secretary-General, Dr Hamadoun I. Touré.

The overall aim of the Asia and Pacific CoE project is to build a
self-sufficient and sustainable mechanism in the region to strengthen ICT
capacity through Human Resources Development.

The first training programme by this node is expected to be launched in
November 2007.