THAILAND INDUSTRY SHOWS STRONG MOMENTUM

Just spent more than 30 years, Thailand, especially Thailand’s capital Bangkok has become a true industrial center of all countries in south-east Asia. A large number of enterprises have entered and been stationed in Bangkok, where they produce, assemble and sell products to markets of different countries and regions including the Association of Southeast Asia Nations.

The production of electrical and electronic devices including automobile devices has already accounted for half of Thailand’s annual export volume (220 billion USD dollars). Meanwhile, locally made products are free from high import duties, enabling some large industrial enterprises to manufacture and sell their products in a much competitive cost.

With export of 54 billion USD dollars, contributing to 25% of Thailand’s export and 15% of GDP, electrical and electronic devices were Thailand’s top product categories of export in 2015. In other words, tourism, once regarded as the mainstay of Thailand economy, only contributed to 11% of GDP, and agriculture 13%. All of these can be traced back to the assembly of televisions and radios in 1960s. Nowadays, Thailand produces and exports more than 60 million home appliances every year, 59% of which are air-condition systems from giants like DAIKIN, Mitsubishi and Fujitsu).

Another outstanding performance of Thailand industry lies in electronic components and integrated circuit. Although products of each major-label brands like Fujitsu, LG, Sony, ASUS, Acer, and Samsung are assembled in Thailand, up till now, none of components manufacture for smart phones are in Thai market. In spite of this, Thailand is still one of world’s largest manufacturer of hard drives and storage cells, second only to China. The industry giants Western Digital and Seagate both have built multiple factories in Thailand. With information storage transiting to data centers and Clouds, demand for hard drives has been spurred because mass data centers need to install tens of thousands of hard drives. As a result, the market size is expected to witness an annual growth of 30%, which appears to be the glad tidings for Thailand.