Summary · why it matters
Veerayuth Kanchuchat, deputy leader of the People's Party, disclosed the results of the 12th Shadow Cabinet meeting, saying that the government's plan to extend the Thai Chai Thai Plus programme by shifting funds from the allocation set aside for the energy transition may not address the economy's long-term needs, because it uses roughly 200 billion baht to stimulate consumption on only one side, while there are still no sufficiently concrete measures to help SME operators and tackle falling agricultural prices. He viewed this as spending money to preserve political popularity rather than to directly help those affected by the energy crisis. On automotive industry policy, the People's Party has been calling on the government to address this problem for many years, but the government only began to move after news emerged of a race to capture investment bases in the region, and the approach now under consideration is turning back toward tax measures, especially raising the excise tax on imported EVs. If the real goal is to maintain local content, then domestic parts and raw materials should be used, along with creating added value for the Thai supply chain, because raising the excise tax is only an indirect measure and is not enough to guarantee that this goal will be achieved. Veerayuth therefore proposed four measures that should be carried out directly: tightening the criteria for counting local content by EV makers that receive subsidies and are in the period of production offsetting; promoting investment that moves Thai industry toward future vehicles, such as supporting the establishment of research and development centres in the country and developing software systems for modern vehicles; allocating budget and setting KPIs for skills development for the roughly 400,000 to 500,000 workers in the automotive industry, so that workers from the internal combustion engine industry can transition to the hybrid and EV industries; and supporting SMEs in the auto parts industry, especially Tier 3 and Tier 4 operators, in upgrading machinery and production processes to meet environmental measures in export markets, which increasingly require verification of carbon emission traceability.
