THE THAI AUTOMOBILE industry is expected grow only slightly next year as consumers’ purchasing power
continues to be weak, despite the government’s injection of huge budgets into infrastructure. Surapong Paisitpatnapong,
vice chairman and spokesman of the Federation of Thai Industries’ Automotive Industry Club, said purchasing power
would not improve much next year because people were still worried about their future incomes as well as because of
persistently high household debts . He said that although the government was investing in infrastructure projects that
would generate income for people, a lot of them still needed to get rid of their household debts before buying bigticket
items like cars.