Thailand a profile

Background :
There has been a massive build-up of the automotive industry in Thailand in recent years, with Toyota, Isuzu, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Honda, Ford, Chrysler, General Motors and Volvo amongst the international car makers with production lines in the country.

The industry however actually began in the early 1960s and was initially very successful in attracting automakers from the United States, Japan and Europe, who set up assembly plants as joint ventures with Thai companies. Many Passenger cars and commercial vehicles were assembled, first from imported semi-knocked down (SKD) kits and later from completely knocked down (CKD) kits.

Japanese automakers now have around 92 percent of the Thai automotive market, with strong networks of parts suppliers, dealers and service centers. It was therefore Japanese subcontractors who laid the foundations of the autoparts industry, but this led to indigenous Thailand's autoparts and components industry.

Thai firms becoming more actively involved in autoparts production.

The industry has been liberalized during the 1990s to encourage local parts and components makers to improve their efficiency, technology, and product quality ahead of the 2000 deadline for the WTO TRIMs agreement which will effectively remove the present 54 percent local content ratio for passenger cars, 70 percent for pick-up trucks and 62 percent for commercial vehicles.