Over the last four decades, Thailand has made remarkable progress in social and economic development, moving from a low-income to an upper middle-income country in less than a generation. Thailand’s economic progress has centered largely around international trade and tourism. As such, the country’s economy has been severely impacted by restrictions to movement brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thailand’s efforts to manage the pandemic and its impacts have been highly commendable. Economic activity is expected to return to its pre-pandemic levels end-2022, with progress on vaccinations and a resumption of tourist arrivals providing support for the recovery. Growth is projected to accelerate to 3.9 percent in 2022 and 4.3 percent in 2023, driven by a recovery in service sector activity.
India-Thailand bilateral trade reached US $ 9.9billion in 2020-21. Among the ASEAN nations, Thailand ranked 5th, as India’s largest trade partner for the year 2020-21. Over the years before the pandemic, exports from India to Thailand increased, but post pandemic our exports have fallen.
India’s engineering exports to Thailand for April-February 2021-22recorded US$ 2.2 billion, registering a growth of 46% over April-February 2020-21.India’s major engineering exports to Thailand include IC engines and parts, Iron and Steel, Industrial Machinery for dairy, agriculture, food processing, textiles, paper, chemicals, etc, Auto Components/Parts, Aluminium and products made of Aluminium and etc.
India’s exports of agricultural machinery, food processing machinery, construction and earthmoving machinery to Thailand for 2020-21stood at US$ 105.2 million.
India has emerged as a net exporter of agri-machinery and shipping equipment to some of the advanced countries like the US, Germany, UK and Italy. India is a world leader in exporting solar irrigation pumps. India being largely an agrarian economy, mechanization has a significant potential.
Thailand agricultural machinery market is expected to cross US$ 1.9 billion by 2025 owing to surge in demand among farmers and rising financial support. Increased food consumption and rapid population growth are driving the agricultural and forestry tractor market in Thailand. This increasing demand for food will have to be met by a tremendous increase in production and per hector yield. Recent socio-demographic changes in Thailand are also driving demand in the Thailand tractors market. The number of people regularly working in agriculture is decreasing in Thailand. This increases the need for agricultural machinery in the country, thus positively impacting Thailand's agricultural tractor market. The fact that tractors are the largest component of the agri-machinery exports from India, accounting for 66 per cent of the shipments, hints India having tremendous opportunity in boosting its export of agricultural machinery to Thailand.