"EEC Never Stop": Architects Vow to Push On Past Political Change

 

Thailand's growth has cooled to 2.5%; the EEC's founding father and current chief say the corridor must accelerate, not stall, to keep pace with rivals.

 

Eight years since the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) Act came into force, the two men most closely associated with its creation and its current execution delivered a blunt message at an exclusive roundtable hosted by Thansettakij and Nation Group on Monday: the project cannot be allowed to lose momentum, however many governments come and go.

 

The event, "EEC Never Stop: The Next Chapter", brought together Dr Uttama Savanayana, former finance minister and the policymaker credited with conceiving the EEC, and Dr Chula Sukmanop, secretary-general of the Office of the Eastern Economic Corridor (EECO), alongside private-sector leaders from industry, aviation, hospitality, retail, and real estate.

 

 

A slowing engine and a widening gap with neighbours 

Dr Uttama set the scene with a sobering account of Thailand's economic trajectory. The idea for the EEC was born around 2015–2016, he said, at a moment when the pace of technological and digital change made it clear Thailand's economic structure needed a fundamental overhaul.

 

He traced four distinct growth phases: an average of 5.3% annually between 2000 and 2007 as the economy recovered from the 1997 crisis; a slowdown to 3.6% between 2010 and 2019 following the global financial crisis; and just 2.5% in the 2022–2024 period as the country emerged from the pandemic.

 

The IMF, he noted, forecasts Thailand will manage barely 2% growth in 2026 — compared with 5–6% for regional peers such as Vietnam and Malaysia.

 

 

 

"Our economic engine is running out of steam," he told the roundtable, pointing to chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and a workforce whose skills have not kept pace with technological change as root causes.

 

He argued that the world has shifted from a globalisation model built purely around cost efficiency to one driven by geopolitics and risk diversification, following successive shocks—from Covid-19 to the war in Ukraine.

 

In that reshuffling of global supply chains, he said, Thailand's location and diversity of resources give it a genuine opening, but only if the country prepares comprehensively: manpower, skills, infrastructure, and regulation must all be ready to court investors.

 

Dr Uttama framed the EEC's guiding logic as the "3P" principle — Public, Private, People — arguing that no matter how the project is dressed up in infrastructure and investment figures, its ultimate purpose must be measured against whether it improves the everyday quality of life for people living in the area.

 

The task now, he said, is to move decisively from planning into concrete execution in order to rebuild investor trust after years of delay on flagship projects.

 

 

Eight years of numbers — and a shift in strategy 

Dr Chula, in his first extended public account of the corridor's health, laid out the scoreboard. In 2024, the combined gross provincial product (GPP) of the three founding EEC provinces — Chonburi, Rayong, and Chachoengsao — reached 2.7 trillion baht, equivalent to roughly 14% of national GDP.

 

Industry accounts for 66% of that economic activity, services 31%, and agriculture 2.6%. Rayong has the highest income per capita in the country, with Chonburi ranked third and Chachoengsao fourth nationally.

 

 

 

Cumulative real investment in the EEC represents about a quarter of the entire country's total, running into the trillions of baht a year — although Dr Chula acknowledged that delays to major projects, chiefly U-Tapao airport and the high-speed rail link, have temporarily kept an estimated 240 billion baht out of the system.

 

He outlined the EECO's five core objectives: attracting modern, environmentally sound economic activity; providing one-stop government services; preparing infrastructure; allocating land appropriately; and building cities where industry and communities can coexist.

 

Around this, the EECO has designated 47 special economic promotion zones — described by Dr Chula as the "egg yolk" strategy — to draw target industries, while surrounding communities form the "egg white": a supply chain of accommodation, tourism, services, and food to support the working population.

 

Twelve target industries have been organised into clusters, including digital, automotive, and green industry, to maximise efficiency.

 

Looking ahead, earlier proposals to expand the EEC have been heavily curtailed. Following significant public opposition over environmental and community impacts, the government recently confirmed that Prachinburi will not be incorporated as the corridor's fourth province.

 

Development will instead remain focused on optimising the existing three provinces, with Chachoengsao being repositioned as a lifestyle, tourism, and spending hub rather than a heavy-industry zone.

 

Perhaps most significant was Dr Chula's confirmation of a strategic pivot: from an "industry-orientated" model to a "people-orientated" one. That shift is being pursued in parallel through the U-Tapao aviation city — branded "EEC City" — in Bang Lamung district and through turning university campuses, including Kasetsart University Sriracha and Burapha University, into special economic promotion zones for hands-on training and skills development.

 

 

Geopolitics as opportunity, not just risk 

Dr Uttama devoted particular attention to how the global backdrop has changed since the EEC was first conceived. Where globalisation once prized cost-cutting above all else, he argued, the world economy is now organised around risk diversification — companies and governments spreading manufacturing and supply chains across multiple locations to guard against disruption, conflict, and trade fragmentation.

 

In that recalibrated landscape, Thailand's geography — straddling routes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans — and its relatively low exposure to natural disasters give it leverage that did not exist, or was not valued in the same way, a decade ago.

 

But he framed this as a conditional opportunity, not a guaranteed windfall. Realising it depends on Thailand having its workforce, skills base, infrastructure, and regulation genuinely ready to compete for investment that increasingly has other options — a pointed reference to how quickly Vietnam, in particular, has been closing the gap.

 

That competitive framing recurred throughout the roundtable, with panellists warning that Thailand cannot assume its natural and cultural advantages are self-executing.

 

 

 

Background: why the East, and why now 

The EEC builds on the legacy of the Eastern Seaboard programme launched in the 1980s, which transformed Chonburi, Rayong, and the wider eastern region from an agricultural and tourism economy into Thailand's industrial heartland, riding the wave of Japanese manufacturing relocation.

 

The EEC Act, approved by Cabinet in June 2016 and enacted in 2018, was designed to formalise and modernise that legacy for a new era of digital and green industry, while explicitly serving as a national model that could later be replicated in the South and other regions.

 

Geopolitically, the corridor sits at a crossroads between the Pacific and Indian Ocean trade routes and benefits from comparatively low natural-disaster risk — an advantage both speakers argued Thailand has not yet fully leveraged against rivals such as Vietnam.

 

 

 

The bottom line 

Both men were careful not to sugarcoat the record. Dr Chula acknowledged, with some rueful humour about the slow pace, that frequent changes of government have dragged on implementation over the past eight years — a point picked up later by industry representatives, who joked that repeated political transitions had cost the corridor momentum it could ill afford.

 

Yet the consistent message from the roundtable's opening session was one of resolve rather than retreat. That resolve was framed less as optimism and more as necessity.

 

With growth forecasts sliding towards 2% and regional rivals posting figures two to three times higher, both speakers argued Thailand has little room left to treat the EEC as discretionary.

 

The corridor already accounts for a quarter of the country's real investment and 14% of GDP; slowing it further, they suggested, would remove one of the few remaining levers capable of lifting the national growth rate at all.

 

The EECO's own answer, going into this second decade, is to broaden its definition of success — judged as much by liveability, skills development, and community outcomes as by industrial output.

 

That recalibration sets up the themes explored elsewhere in this roundtable series, from hospitality and retail to logistics and industrial land. The EEC's mandate now, in short, is to prove itself through delivery rather than vision, as the corridor edges into what organisers are calling its "next chapter".