Within the Thailand 4.0 agenda the EEC, the Eastern Economic Corridor initiative, is really a big part of it and we are seeing very steady progress, beginning with the enactment of the EEC act. The second aspect of it is that the government has actually identified all the major projects that’s required to be pursued within the EEC region. The high-speed rail, of course, the U-Tapao aviation part, as well as the Laem Chabang Seaport, two other big projects that we expect will be concluded either at end of 2019 or early 2020.
The other big agenda under Thailand 4.0 is really about digitalisation, and on that aspect, the government has been pursuing the enablement of Wi-Fi networks across the country. So what they have done is they have been laying fibre optics around nationwide, and in fact they have laid fibre optics to some 25,000 villages in the remote areas, trying to get everybody connected to the network. Digitalisation of the economy as well as banking services enable the banks to reach out to clientele who were not within our reach in the past. Take our digital bank, for example. Tomorrow, which we launched in 2019, has a full digital onboarding capability, where our customers don't need to come to the branch to open an account with our digital bank. This means that we are able to now access a bigger population of Millennials and clients outside of the region of our traditional branches. And I think this is one very good example of how digitalisation can bring about broader financial inclusion and reach to the broader community. There are over 3m SMEs in Thailand and they form 99.7% of all corporates. In 2018 SMEs contributed about 36% of the Thailand GDP and the government expects that the number will go to 50% by 2025.
A lot of the SMEs are now into the next generation, either the second or third. As a bank we believe that we have the expertise and know-how and we are in the position to guide our SMEs to really go about digitalising their business. And in UOB, we have actually launched the UOB smart business transformation Programme for our SME customers. Thailand is the first country to launch this programme outside of Singapore in 2019. We have some 500 SMEs who actually come and attend our seminars and our business transformation programme. Many of them have seen a tremendous improvement in their business after going through the programme. So, this is one area which we believe banks can value add and really help our SME customers.
