Thailand's natural rubber (NR) sector mirrors impressive growth and
the limitations on that growth. Thailand is the world's largest NR producer and exporter,
employing around one million families or up to six million people, and is the third largest source
of export revenues. But the rubber sector also embodies the more general challenge facing Thai industry of upgrading – raising value added efficiently based on innovation and linkages among (Thai) firms. Most Thai rubber
production goes to exports of raw or semi-processed rubber, not downstream, rubber-based
products such as for example auto parts. Yet such manufactured products, which incorporate
more technology and require more local inputs, generate higher revenues than semi-processed
rubber.2
Therefore because the Thai rubber industry is unevenly developed, it is not generating
the skills, linkages and revenues Thailand requires to sustain growth and development over the
longer term.