Twenty five forward thinking company executives met at the Holiday Inn last week to discuss the future of the Automotive Focus Group (AFG) vis a vis the concept of a Manufacturing Focus Group (MFG).
Outgoing President of the AFG Frank Holzer, who has been in the position for the past six years, explained how the AFG had of late moved away from its automotive roots to the stage that automotive representation was now below 50 percent.
There were many reasons for the drift away from the original AFG concept, but it was agreed that it was time to expand, something which was not going to be possible under the restrictive AFG banner.
The idea of morphing into a Manufacturing Focus Group was discussed and agreed upon, with the first MFG committee being Frank Holzer (President, Australian), Alexandro Menocci (Italian), Bryan Bowman (USA), Praveen Jaduvanshi (Indian) and Josh Kramlick (USA). All of the above first committee are long stay expats and come from different manufacturing backgrounds.
After acceptance of the committee by the members, Dennis Meserol (TRACTUS) gave a run-down on the state of the kingdom, its politics, economics and state of the manufacturing industry. In general, Thailand is still on the positive side of the ledger with percentage growth registered in three sectors: Service (3.7), Manufacturing (1.6) and Agriculture (4.3). GDP is also up 4.3 percent and Foreign Direct Investment looking stronger.
Of course, the forthcoming election will probably produce a hiatus, but historically Thailand seems to be able to weather these kinds of disruptions.
Frank Holzer can be contacted at [email protected] .
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