TICA’s development partners include the following countries and organizations, in alphabetical order: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, United States of America, Colombo Plan Secretariat, European Union, UNDP, UNFPA , UNICEF.
TICA is also seeking to forge partnership with other potential partners, such as Brazil, Egypt, Switzerland,…… based on mutual interests in order to be able to do more with limited resources and create synergy in the global partnership for development.
Policy
The Royal Thai Government, through TICA, has been providing technical assistance to the neighbouring countries for more than 30 years. Since 1994, Thailand has been forging partnership with a number of traditional donors under a trilateral arrangement in order to further our development efforts provided to the third countries. Over the past 5 years, the efforts of the Royal Thai Government has been intensified and more committed to the development cooperation under various frameworks at the bilateral, sub-regional, regional, trilateral and multilateral levels. In response to the government policy, TICA has been working closely with several traditional donors, both bilateral and multilateral, under the partnership framework of trilateral cooperation, such as Colombo Plan, France, Hungary, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, UNDP, UNFPA, and UNICEF. Meanwhile, TICA is also exploring the possibility of expanding such the partnership arrangement with other donors, including Canada and Switzerland.
In addition, Thailand has also been ever more active in various regional and multilateral frameworks, some of which are her own initiatives, such as the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) and the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD). Working together with her development partners, Thailand strives to create added values and synergy to her development cooperation efforts in line with the 8th Millennium Development Goal -- Global Partnership for Development.
Why is partnership for development and cooperation worthwhile?
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Trilateral cooperation offers the opportunities for furthering or complementing bilateral projects and activities, for both Thailand and our development partners, to be able to better respond to the needs of partner countries. The integration of expertise in different fields and co-financing enable Thailand and the partners to do more with the same limited resources, be they financial, personnel or others.
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Trilateral cooperation supports the efforts of international community in various cooperation frameworks at the sub-regional, regional and multilateral levels. Extra support of the development partners is always welcomed to help speed up the development process in the recipient countries.
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Cooperation under a partnership arrangement may be better able to continue on-the-ground implementation of projects, particularly in difficult times, such as when a recipient country may be boycotted by a donor country with the consequent project termination or temporary suspension. If the project was carried out under the trilateral or the multilateral banner, there may be less pressure to terminate or suspend the project. The pressure may, instead, be to ensure that the grassroots people are not victims of political interests.
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It is more cost-effective to implement a project under the partnership arrangement, particularly in a distant country or a remote region, where travel costs usually consume the largest part of the budget. It seems more logical to expand new activities in new frontiers through the well-established foothold of development partners.
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Being a partner for development, both with donors and recipient countries, Thailand is more exposed to various international conferences and forums, where this emerging donor country can learn and share development challenges, needs, progress made, lessons learned and best practices in development cooperation with the like-minded international community. The benefits are three-fold -- for Thailand herself, for development partners, and for recipient countries.