Thailand is a middle-income country

Thailand is a middle-income country with an impressive GDP growth rate of approximately 7% over the past half century. Facing a ‘middle income trap,’ Thailand is struggling to move from labor-intensive industry to higher value added activities, such as advanced engineering, design and research and development (R&D). So far the failure in overcoming such a trap is, to a large extent, due o weak and fragmented national innovation system. Passive and slow technological learning of firms, ineffective and incoherent government policies, isolated education and training institutes, technologically unsupportive and risk-avert financial institutions, incompetent and politicized trade/industry associations and unfavorable institutional context has been perpetuated circumstances for the past fifty years of Thailand’s industrialization. Though there are some major initiatives recently, they failed to instill an effective and long-lasting learning process in the Thai NIS leading to successful industrial and technological catching up.