Thailand advances plan to become ASEAN semiconductor centre - TV BRICS

Thailand has established the National Semiconductor and Advanced Electronics Policy Committee to advance its semiconductor industry and support its ambition to become a regional manufacturing hub with... Read original →

Thailand’s formation of a national semiconductor committee signals its ambition to leap from contract manufacturing to a strategic tech node. This will catalyze mid-to-downstream ecosystems—especially in AI chip packaging, power semiconductors, and automotive MCUs—but upstream reliance on U.S., Japanese, and Dutch equipment and EDA tools exposes it to escalating compliance costs. Against Vietnam’s aggressive tax incentives and Malaysia’s mature OSAT clusters, Thailand must rapidly scale workforce pipelines or risk policy enthusiasm outpacing execution. Within 18 months, without securing second-tier fabs from Taiwan, China players like TSMC or UMC, its $76B 2050 vision may remain aspirational. The real long-tail impact hinges not on wafer output, but on leveraging RCEP to build regional IP-sharing frameworks—otherwise, it risks becoming merely a redundancy site for global giants.