The FINANCIAL — Thailand’s industrial production activities continued to fall in August as contraction accelerated despite some improvement in the automotive sector, the Industry Ministry said on September 30, according to Nasdaq.
The country’s manufacturing production index fell 8.3% from last year in August, quickening from the revised 6.3% year-over-year fall in July. The latest MPI, however, went up 0.5% when compared with July.
Nattapol Rangsitpol, deputy director general of the ministry’s Office of Industrial Economics, said in a statement that continued declines in industrial production could be explained by contraction in the manufacturing of key industrial products such as hard-disk drives, television sets, and electronics components, despite healthy growth in the automotive sector.
Official data showed Thailand’s automotive manufacturing grew 13.26% year-over-year in August. Local automotive sales dropped 9.94% and exports rose 13.88% from last year.
The production of electronics goods and electrical appliances plunged 25.06% from a year ago.
The OIE said that weakening domestic purchasing power and economic slowdown in Thailand’s key export markets, including the EU and Japan, as well as an earlier relocation of a television manufacturing base by a producer to another Southeast Asian country contributed to the fall.
It added that a slowdown in the global industrial sector and competition with Chinese steel producers have pushed the country’s steel production down by 14.93% year-over-year in August.
Thailand’s capacity utilization, which gauges how fully factories are used, inched lower to 57.77% from a revised 58.67% in the preceding month.
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