CEO Comment : Mr. Vikrom Kromadit, CEO of Amata Corporation has kindly agreed to supply a quarterly update for The Amata Times. It should give us a better understanding of the business model used by Amata during these current difficult economic times and a global economic downturn.
Most Thai people refer to the current economic problems of the United States and the global economic downturn as a Hamburger Crisis. Much the same way the rest of the world referred to 1997’s problems in Thailand and elsewhere as the Tom Yam Goong crisis in Asia.
How will you survive from Hamburger Crisis year 2009 and is there any effect to your industrial parks or investment or export?
“This crisis affects to the great countries that have high number of GDP such as the United States of America, the Union of Europe and Japan, because those countries have the total number of GDP that equals 70% of the world’s GDP, and then the world GDP is going to be affected intensely, it will make the purchasing power of main trading partner countries of Thailand decrease. That will make more than a half of the Thailand GDP which depends on the export section will be affected. I think the next year, 2009, the number of exports from Thailand will fall rapidly, and this will affect our economy. So the industrial section that is nearly a half of Thai GDP will be affected by decreased export market.”
Which fields of the industrial estates under Amata have been affected by this crisis? How do you plan to deal with the issue? “Now, the first division of Amata to be effected is the estate business for a customer who will purchase, that is our main business. It is going to decrease nearly 50% while the ordinary old customers will experience industrial expansion decreases. We planed to deal with this by the reduction or elimination all of expenses, which are unnecessary to spend or use. It is a strict way to economize but necessary.” For the overall image, what is a measure that Thai industrial section will keep to be a process to solve this crisis? “The industrial section of Thailand should adjust the vision of business to be more in line with marketing ideas. They have to think about marketing and new research and development (R&D) in the international world and make a change to the machine, equipment or labor to carry on, irrespective of any group or kind of products that our machines and staff be able to produce and working, and by thinking of new ways of marketing is an important point. “
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