| Abstract | Economic development is closely dependent on industrial development, not only with respect to the industrial sector’s pivotal contribution to economic growth but also on the structural transformation of an economy. In Thailand, industrialization and urbanization have been the major driving forces towards modernization starting in the early 1960s. With the government’s objective of putting more emphasis on industrial development, a number of policies and strategies had been developed and adopted during the past four decades. This thesis research focused on the industrial development policies and the factors that influenced the regional pattern of industrial development in Thailand. Specifically, this study has aimed to assess the effectiveness of the policies of the Government of Thailand towards dispersing the manufacturing factories away from Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR). Thus, with the main purpose of examining the industrial development pattern in Thailand including the factors that influenced the location patterns of industries as well as the relationship between industries and rural economic development, especially in terms of employment generation, this study had been envisaged to help the policy-makers of the Government of Thailand in better understanding the industrial development trend of the country at the macro level. In the analysis of such patterns, policies and influential factors, both secondary and primary sources of data and information were availed of in the course of this research. The descriptive analyses of the study have aimed to investigate the impact of the trend of industrialization on the changing manufacturing structure of Thailand. For the analysis of the industrial development pattern and regional variation from 1996 to 2005, indicators were developed for computingcomposite indices in order to extract the meaningful information and set the corresponding interpretations. At the micro level, attempts were made to understand the linkages between the local resources and labor force both for the agro-based and non-agricultural industries in selected locations and comparing such linkages between the MNCs and SMEs for better understanding of the impact of such industries on employment generation especially in the rural areas of the country. Since the 1960s, the industries in the country entered into a new period of rapid progress and growth that labeled Thailand as one of the NICs in Asia. At present however, the features of the development are rather quite different from that of the 1960s because currently the exporting industries have been driving the country’s overall industrial growth. Although several factors describe the country’s impressive economic performance, the realization of export promotion privileges initiated since 1972 could be a very important factor that led to the fast pacing industrial development of the country. In general, in the three time period analysis of this study, it was revealed that the major concentration of the country’s industrial development had taken place in Zone 1 and neighboring provinces spreading from the core to the peripheral areas along the boundaries of Zone 1 and Zone 2. Many factors that have contributed to the industrial concentration in the BMR and Eastern Sea Board (ESB) are associated with location decision and policy factors, considering that industrial location plays the key factor for the industries’ operations and performance. Despite wide zonal variation of the industrial development in Thailand, the outcomes of the government’s industrial decentralization policy are very impressive that could pave the path to greater success in the coming decades. Moreover, the industrial linkage analysis of the study also revealed that rural industries have played important roles in utilizing local raw materials, natural resources, and labor force. The results of the analysis also have indicated that the agro-industries are more closely linked with the available local resources than the non-agro industries. In terms of employment in the industries in rural areas, the SMEs have played very important role in absorbing local labor force from remote rural areas, by providing the local people the opportunities to gain access to non-farm employment for improving their income. Rural employment has been very crucial for the poor people especially the landless, while at the same time reducing the rate of rural migration. The industrial sector employment structure is also flexible for many workers in terms of age and education. The large enterprises (LEs) also have equally played the key roles of providing employment to well-trained and highly educated workers of the young generation. In general, this study also demonstrated that the SMEs are important for rural industrialization as well as for generating employment in rural areas and to a greater extent controlling rural to urban migration. Based on the results of this study, some strategies and policies for rural industrialization both at the macro and micro levels have been suggested. Most importantly, the ongoing industrial decentralization policy should be reinforced and further strengthened especially in Zone 3 by taking advantage of the economic cooperation with neighboring counties such as those in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) and the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) in terms of formulating various incentives such as, the establishment of economic promotion zones (EPZs). Furthermore, the SMEs and agro-industries should be given high focus and priority in order that the rural areas could gain more benefits from the new incentives provided by the industries especially those in the peripheral areas that had been relying more on local entrepreneurs. |