The Southern Region Industrial Estate in Songkhla province of Thailand is unusually quiet. Long winding roads, usually bustling with heavy vehicles, are mostly empty. There are only two industrial estates in southern Thailand, the other being the Songkla Industrial Estate. In whole, there are sixty seven industrial estates throughout the nation. Sirianya Pornsuwankun, a tenant of the Southern Region Industrial Estate and owner of waste recycling company Nano Recycle, mentioned doing enterprise in southern Thailand is different from different parts of the nation.
Some consultants consider that southern Thailand struggles to attract overseas investors in comparison with the Greater Bangkok area and the eastern facet, the place the vast majority of the commercial estates are located. The notion of southern Thailand as unsafe as a outcome of ongoing insurgencies within the provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat might have hampered economic progress. Last yr, Thailand’s economic system grew at 2.6%, considerably lower than other Southeast Asian nations like Malaysia and Indonesia, which registered 8.7% and 5.3% development, respectively. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have projected Thailand’s gross domestic product growth to be under 4% this 12 months.
In hopes of stimulating the financial system, politicians have made electoral guarantees to attract overseas funding to the region. The Democrat Party, which held a stronghold in the previous election primarily in southern Thailand, has bold plans for the region. Niphon Bunyamanee, the party’s deputy leader, envisions Hat Yai—Songkhla province’s commercial hub—as an economic powerhouse rivaling Singapore and Hong Kong. He believes Hat Yai’s strategic location near the Gulf of Thailand and the Malaysian border presents immense potential.
Prommin Lertsuridej, the pinnacle of the Pheu Thai Party’s economic affairs committee, stated his party goals to establish a new business zone in Songkhla as a pilot venture for the southern region. They hope to make enterprise laws extra accessible, create amenities for overseas and domestic investors to collaborate, and actively promote peace and prosperity within the region. Although he did not reveal specifics, Prommin claimed Pheu Thai has drafted the regulation for the proposed enterprise zone, reports Channel News Asia.
Caretaker Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha stated that he would push for extra infrastructure within the south if he remained in energy. Running for the premiership with the newly fashioned United Thai Nation Party, Prayut said his next government would do more to help southern Thailand, similar to constructing a new freeway and pushing forward different ongoing infrastructure tasks. He cited dual-track trains linking Thailand with Malaysia and bridging the Andaman aspect to the Gulf of Thailand aspect to spice up the financial system.
Pita Limjaroenrat, chief of the Move Forward Party, also aims to improve southern Thailand’s connectivity. Smuggled needs to vary Songkhla from a tourism-based financial system to a inventive one with better transport infrastructure.
Virot Ali, a political, economic, and development lecturer at Thammasat University, notes that southern Thailand lacks the numerous investments and industrial estates present in different elements of the nation, partly as a end result of regional unrest. He asserts that traders would want the benefit of connectivity when doing business, one thing southern Thailand nonetheless lacks. Virot believes that shifting forward, the financial system wants contemporary ideas and contemporary pondering.
Sinead Treewanchai, an economic lecturer at Prince of Songkhla University, posits that the economic zones in Songkhla lack traders because the region is perceived to not have the human capital for capital-intensive merchandise. Investors would doubtless go for the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) as a substitute. The EEC is a particular economic zone spanning the three jap provinces of Thailand: Chachoengsao, Chonburi, and Rayong..