Piles of rubbish, rusting furniture and discarded machinery litter one of Thailand’s top high-tech parks, a former symbol of economic prowess laid to waste by weeks of flooding.
Many of the companies located in the country’s industrial heartland say it will be several months, at least, before their operations return to normal. Investor confidence is likely to take even longer to recover.
At least one major manufacturer, Sanyo Semiconductor, is pulling the plug on its operations in Ayutthaya Province north of Bangkok -altogether, while others are considering moving to safer areas.
Even if large dykes were built around the industrial parks, production would have to be suspended if the area is flooded again because access to the site would become too difficult, he said.
The disaster caused billions of US dollars in damage and dealt a severe blow to the global supply chain. There are also questions about whether insurers will continue to cover companies located in the flood-prone region.
Japanese high-tech giant Toshiba still has no idea when operations will resume at eight of its affected factories because new machines and parts are needed and electricity and telephone links have not yet been fully restored.
In total seven major industrial estates in central Thailand fell victim to the nation’s worst floods in half a century, which left hundreds dead.
While many Japanese companies — a key pillar of the economy — have said publicly they remain committed to Thailand, in private there is frustration with the -government’s handling of the crisis, particularly its confusing advice.
“I wish the government had done more,” said the president of a local subsidiary of a Japanese textile producer, who had to rely on the media for information about the disaster.
His factory, located in the northern suburbs of Bangkok, close to where the government set up its emergency response center, was submerged in 1.5m of water, despite the firm’s efforts to protect it with sandbags.
“In the beginning Don Mueang was a flood relief and evacuation center so the government said it would be OK ... but they completely failed,” the Japanese businessman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The factory’s stock was destroyed and the machinery is now rusting and needs to be repaired or replaced, but he has no plan to abandon the country.
The Thai Board of Investment is planning to invite chief executives to Bangkok next month for a forum at which it says long-term flood prevention measures will be announced.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day