NEPCON Thailand to continuously boost Thailand's electronics industry, by strengthening local manufacturers with government's revitalized strategies

NEPCON Thailand 2003, a world-famous NEPCON series of event by Reed Exhibitions, is formally announced by Reed Tradex, Thailand's leading show organizer, to exactly stage during 17-19 July 2003 at BITEC, Bangkok. Following great success of the last edition in 2001, the 2003 event aims for the industry betterment by strongly emphasizing on presenting advanced technologies and solutions in electronics manufacturing services to local electronics contract manufacturers.

In the year 2001, Thailand's electrical and electronics appliance export volume was worth US$ 22,900 million or 35% of total country exports. The electronics products/parts' export figure was worth up to US$ 15,500 million, comprising figures of components and cables at US$ 7,829 million, semiconductor products (ICs, transistors and diodes) at US$ 4,396 million as well as other electronics equipment, such as PCB, ball bearing, motors and power generators as well as facsimile machines, at US$ 3,272 million.

Major investors in Thailand's electronics manufacturing are from Japan, USA, EU and Singapore, respectively. In 2001, Board of Investment of Thailand (BoI) granted investment permits for 173 projects worth US$ 1,235 million (Bt. 51,885 million) to electrical and electronics appliance manufacturers, of which 83% is from foreign sector.

In order to sustain and encourage investment in the country, Thai Government has reviewed duty and tax rates on imported raw materials/parts for electrical and electronics industry. Priority of tax reduction is given to products that could not be produced locally and to local manufacturers in electrical and electronics manufacturing. The target is to reduce tax rates of imported raw materials for local manufacturing down to 0% in order to correspond with AFTA in 2003. This may be a short-term strategy, but it does create confidence in electronics manufacturing and contract manufacturing sectors in long term, with supports from revitalized strategies such as manufacturing technology developments, branding of Thailand products, manufacturing skill training, product R&D, use of local contents to substitute imports. Most importantly, the country electronics manufacturers need to set measures against non-tariff barriers from counterpart countries, especially from EU, such as WEEE that will be applied in the year 2004.

The event will serve Thailand electronics and contract manufacturing sectors for telecommunications products, computer hardware, home electronics appliances and OEMs as Thailand has become an important sourcing country in this region, besides China and Vietnam.