Industrial development in Thailand : the five year development plans and their implementation

Inthanoochai, Kamron (1989) Industrial development in Thailand : the five year development plans and their implementation. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

The thesis considers the problem of development planning in Thailand, revealed by the series of national five-year development plans over the period from 1961, when the first plan was introduced, to 1986. It considers the meaning of development planning as this has developed in Thailand, and the role of both external agencies such as the World Bank and internal agencies such as the National Economic and Social Development Board and the Board of Investment in this process. In particular, the thesis looks at industrial development and uses the Fifth Development Plan, 1982-1986, as a case-study. A number of questions are posed. What is meant by industrial development, and what are the main theories which have been advanced by the scholars in this field? Is it possible to use the concept of industrial development as a means of comparing the situation in different countries of South East and Far East Asia? Are the theories of industrial development, which were derived from western economic models in the 1950s, still relevant today? What are the theoretical objections to these models being used for non-western societies? In today's world, it is the newly industrialising countries (NICs) which appear to have been most successful in achieving economic growth and industrialisation. How does this affect the process of development and industrialisation in South East Asia? Does the `World Bank Analysis' continue to dominate the approach which countries such as Thailand take, and in what ways, if any, have the analysis and the recommendations made by the World Bank changed in recent years? The theory of development, which was developed by economists, sociologists and political scientists from the 1950s to the 1980s is dealt with in the thesis. From this the work develops an analysis of the theories and concepts of industrial development. It considers three main aspects: the development of industrial development ideas in western societies; the perspective of non-western middle-income societies; the contribution to theory of the NICs experience. Industrial development has stressed four basic factors: the move from agriculture to manufacturing and the proportionate share of GNP; import substitution and export-led growth; financial incentives for industry and business as the main government policy, aided by external aid and investment; the distribution of industrial development in the capital and the regions and the problems of concentration and distortion. All of these factors will be examined in the case study of Thailand, and compared and contrasted with the relevant experiences of certain selected countries in South East Asia. Primacy is given to the issue of industrial development in the regions and capital of Thailand, and the continuing difficulty, expressed throughout all of the development plans, of dispersing development more evenly between the different geographical areas of the country, between different economic sectors and between different classes and groups in the population.

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