Posted on 30 Sep 2015
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.
