This country brief was the feature on the APMF home page in April 2002 and is archived here.

Thailand has overcome several strategic disadvantages to become a serious player in the foreign investment market in Asia. During the bubble decade it overcame perceptions of political instability (the last military coup was over 11 years ago now), continuing poverty & high income differentials together with low levels of education and use of English as a business language to become a favoured base for much investment.

The automobile manufacturing industry has established a strong base in Thailand for example, and tourism continues to thrive, with Thai resorts and cities topping key competitive tourist destinations on brand recall and recognition with the exception of Bali.

Perceived corruption is high compared to Malaysia and squeaky clean Singapore, and latter concerns regarding alleged political attacks on the freedom of the press have centered attention of Thailand's traditionally free press. Yet the significance of these two factors in discouraging foreign investment has traditionally been over-blown. Generally big companies just adapt to the prevailing culture, and many blaming 'corruption' for their failures as they pack up and leave have simply not been able to adapt. Thailand now provides a low cost manufacturing base, with infrastructure improving slowly but (to the Westerner's mind) surprisingly surely in the normal Thai way.

A key threat to the automotive industry is the fear that fellow signatories to the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) continue to slow pedal their pledges of reducing import tariffs. Tourism is a major revenue earner but suffers from low revenue per visitor, and faces competitive threats from Indo China, Malaysia, and East Asia. One strategy is to improve the "quality" of tourists and share them with other regional centres.

Economically things are looking good for Thailand, being the South East Asian 'star' in the first quarter of 2002, and economists are raising their estimates for 2002/2003 GDP growth to an average of around 2.5 to 3% for 2001 and 3 to 3.5% in 2003. Politically, Thaksin's commendable 'grassroots-theory' economic strategy has run into several practical difficulties at start up, while his support, despite what the papers say, remains strong in the provinces. Just for how long however, is more debatable.