Thailand Reviews Factory Index After Finding 800 Billion Baht in Uncounted Electronics Output

Electronics factories expose a gap in Thailand's growth data

Thailand is revising its manufacturing statistics after officials identified major electronics producers missing from an industrial index, with production valued at about 800 billion baht. The changes could feed into the country's third quarter GDP figures in November 2026, as Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul challenges a growth projection of 2.1%.

The Office of Industrial Economics has already reported a stronger picture of factory activity after expanding its coverage. Its August manufacturing update put the Manufacturing Production Index, or MPI, at 103.43 in August 2026, up 4.44% from a year earlier. Factory capacity utilization, a measure of how much available production capacity is being used, stood at 58.28%.

The agency attributed support to global demand for electronics associated with artificial intelligence and data centers. It said broader coverage of new manufacturing activities would better reflect Thailand's industrial structure, alongside a move toward a chain linking approach that updates the index more frequently.

Danucha Pichayanan, secretary general of the National Economic and Social Development Council, or NESDC, says the review had been underway for six or seven months. Questions about the index date back to 2024, well before the latest political dispute.

The central issue is how accurately Thailand measures production as new factories and products enter the economy. GDP, the value added by production across the country, draws on manufacturing statistics as well as information about agriculture, services and spending. Better factory data can therefore change both the recorded size of the economy and its measured growth.

Why the prime minister challenged the 2.1% forecast

Anutin brought the issue into public debate during the weekly Talk with the Anutin Cabinet programme on October 24. He pointed to stronger investment, exports, employment and tax receipts as reasons to reassess the economic outlook.

The prime minister said foreign investment during the first half of the year was already 30% above the total for the previous full year. He also cited export growth exceeding 20%, at times approaching 25%, alongside rising corporate and personal income tax collections.

Anutin questioned the growth projection directly:

"How can the economy still grow by only 2.1%? GDP growth this year will definitely not be 2.1%," he said.

Danucha addressed the controversy at Government House on October 27. He described discussions about the reliability of the underlying information and rejected the suggestion that officials had been told to manufacture a higher result.

Danucha, whose agency compiles Thailand's national accounts, said:

"The Prime Minister did not order any manipulation of the GDP growth figures," Danucha declared.

The government's revised assessment was still being considered following consultations with the Thai Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Thai Industries and other business groups. Danucha said the final GDP outcome would also depend on agriculture and services, including the effects of flooding late in the third quarter.

What officials found outside the factory survey

NESDC officials compared customs information about exporters with the companies represented in the manufacturing index. Danucha described four or five major electronics manufacturing groups, with production worth roughly 800 billion baht, that had been omitted. In another explanation, he referred to seven or eight large companies with combined exports exceeding 800 billion baht. The descriptions use different company groupings and measures, production value and export value.

The existing index used 2021 as its fixed base year. Some newer factories and products had not begun operating or producing at that point, leaving the statistical system poorly placed to capture their subsequent expansion.

Danucha said the problem arose from the limits of the measurement system rather than wrongdoing by private companies. The review involved economic agencies and Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas.

The 800 billion baht figure measures gross factory production. GDP counts the value added at each stage: a factory's output after subtracting the materials and services used to make it. For example, imported components form part of the value of an exported electronic product, while Thailand's GDP captures the value created within Thailand.

Officials must therefore work through production costs, imports and other national accounting information before calculating how much the expanded factory coverage changes GDP.

How the new manufacturing index will work

Thailand's revision addresses three connected parts of the MPI: the products covered, the factories surveyed and the weight assigned to each type of production. A weight determines how strongly a particular industry affects the total index.

Pipat Luengnaruemitchai, chief economist at Kiatnakin Phatra Financial Group, explained that economic statistics rely on surveys because agencies cannot collect complete information from every company. An index can fall behind when its product list, factory sample or industry weights remain unchanged while production shifts.

The revised approach, described by Danucha as chain linking or Chain Laspeyres, compares production using the previous year's structure and connects those comparisons into a longer series. This allows weights to move with changes in manufacturing instead of depending for years on a distant reference period.

Danucha said Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan use comparable approaches. Thailand's GDP calculations already use chain linking, so the immediate methodological change concerns an important input into GDP: the manufacturing index.

Factory coverage and the calculation method are being updated in stages. The Office of Industrial Economics had already broadened coverage in figures released in late September. The manufacturing release scheduled for October 30 was expected to incorporate the next methodological changes and report September activity.

SCB Economic Intelligence Center, a bank research unit, calculated that the revised manufacturing figures showed growth of about 4.4%, compared with approximately 0.5% before the update. That is a difference of roughly 3.9 percentage points, largely associated with wider coverage of electronics products and factories.

How much could measured GDP growth rise?

Kasikorn Securities estimated that revisions could add 0.2 to 0.5 percentage points to measured GDP growth. Applied to a 2.1% projection, that would produce a range of roughly 2.3% to 2.6%. This is a private sector estimate; the NESDC has not announced the size or direction of the final adjustment.

Sorapol Veeramethikul, an investment strategy executive at Kasikorn Securities, said the calculations should capture activities associated with AI, data centers and supply chains more fully. The brokerage put Thailand's economic structure at approximately 60% services, 30% industry and 10% agriculture.

Those shares help explain why a large change in manufacturing statistics translates into a smaller change across the whole economy. Services account for about twice the share of industry, while agricultural performance also affects the total.

Pipat expected annual growth of 2.5%, citing expansion of 2.4% in the first half. He reasoned that a full year result of 2.1% would require a weaker second half. He also cited a Bank of Thailand forecast of 2.3%.

Amonthep Chawla, head of research at CIMB Thai Bank, supported reviewing the MPI because foreign investment and machinery imports appeared stronger than the production index suggested. He said the sample needed to reflect an economy that had changed substantially, while stronger long term growth would require better productivity, more investment and sufficient household income to support spending.

When the revisions are expected

The statistical review extends beyond a single monthly factory reading. Danucha outlined a schedule covering the third quarter release, earlier quarters of 2026 and several previous years.

The key dates and stages are:

• 2024: Economic agencies began questioning whether the MPI captured Thailand's changing manufacturing structure.
• Late September 2026: Broader factory and product coverage appeared in a new MPI series.
• October 24: Anutin publicly challenged the 2.1% growth projection.
• October 27: Danucha explained the review and the omitted electronics producers.
• October 30: The Office of Industrial Economics was scheduled to release September manufacturing figures.
• November 2026: The third quarter GDP release was expected to incorporate revised manufacturing information, with revisions extending back to the first quarter of 2026.
• About two weeks after November 16: Danucha indicated that revised figures for the full year of 2025 would follow.
• February 2027: A further revision was expected to reach back to 2023.

Recalculating earlier periods matters because growth measures change between two points in time. Updating both the current period and its comparison period can alter the growth rate differently from an adjustment to the latest quarter alone.

Other accounting gaps complicate the picture

Amonthep identified two further difficulties in interpreting Thailand's GDP: large swings in inventories and a substantial statistical discrepancy.

Inventories are goods that businesses produce or purchase but have not yet sold. A buildup adds to measured production in that period, while selling goods from existing stocks can support sales without requiring the same amount of new production. Sharp movements can make the relationship between factory output and demand harder to follow.

The statistical discrepancy is the gap between estimates built from different sets of economic information. Production and spending should describe the same economy, but surveys, timing and incomplete records can leave their totals apart. Amonthep said Thailand's discrepancy was large enough to complicate forecasting.

The Bank of Thailand has also revised external accounts. According to SCB EIC's assessment, a September review reduced the current account deficit for the first eight months of 2026 from $15.5 billion to $1.3 billion, a change of $14.2 billion.

Much of that adjustment involved electronics imported for processing and then sent abroad while ownership remained with an overseas company. Balance of payments accounting treats ownership as central, so goods moving across a border can receive different treatment from a purchase by a Thai business.

The current account records trade in goods and services alongside income and transfers with the rest of the world. Its revision and the MPI update both reflect the difficulty of measuring modern electronics production, where goods, ownership and payments can cross borders in different ways.

Why stronger factory figures may leave households struggling

SCB EIC described Thailand's recovery as K shaped: electronics and digital activities are expanding while many households and businesses follow a weaker course. Ekniti also warned that stronger economic indicators might not benefit the whole population.

Household debt stood at 85.2% of GDP in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest ratio in more than six years, according to SCB EIC. Households nevertheless faced limited access to credit and tight cash flow. Unemployment increased during the first two months of the third quarter, with the rate among younger workers more than twice the general rate.

A higher measured GDP can reduce debt ratios because GDP is the denominator, the number beneath the debt total in the calculation. Pipat estimated that the possible effect on the public debt ratio would be limited to around half a percentage point of GDP. Families still have to meet their repayments from their own income.

SCB EIC estimated that flooding from late September into October could reduce 2026 GDP by about 0.1%. It identified damage to property, inventories and premises, disruption to transport and supply chains, and reduced purchasing power as the main channels.

Higher fuel costs create another pressure. SCB EIC said the oil fund had a negative balance of roughly 100 billion baht on October 11, limiting its ability to cushion domestic prices. The research unit expected energy and fresh food costs to push inflation toward, or temporarily above, the top of the 1% to 3% target range late in 2026 and early in 2027.

What businesses and investors will watch

Anutin argued that accurate growth figures matter for investment confidence. He said Thailand should compete through its workforce, transport, logistics, domestic market and regional production networks, rather than relying on cheap labor or electricity.

Kasikorn Securities identified Bangkok Bank and Bank of Ayudhya as possible beneficiaries of improved investor sentiment if revised figures reveal stronger investment activity. Business lending and corporate expansion connect banks closely to the investment cycle.

SCB EIC expected the policy interest rate to remain at 1% through the end of 2027, citing concentrated growth, household debt and financing constraints for smaller businesses. It expected measures aimed at improving access to credit to play a larger role.

November's GDP release will give businesses a clearer account of how electronics production fits into Thailand's economy. For households, the practical measures remain employment, earnings, prices and access to credit. For policymakers, the task is to use the improved information to identify where production is growing and where support is still needed.

Key Points

• Officials identified electronics manufacturing groups with production worth about 800 billion baht missing from the MPI.
• The Office of Industrial Economics reported August 2026 manufacturing growth of 4.44% and capacity utilization of 58.28%.
• Thailand is broadening factory coverage and introducing chain linking to keep the index closer to current production patterns.
• Kasikorn Securities estimated a possible growth revision of 0.2 to 0.5 percentage points. The NESDC has not announced a final adjustment.
• Changes are expected to affect the third quarter GDP release in November, followed by revisions to earlier years.
• Electronics expansion is occurring alongside household debt, credit constraints, flooding and higher energy costs.