hai businesses are increasingly looking to Indonesia for growth as they seek larger markets and economies of scale beyond their home market, with sectors ranging from consumer goods to manufacturing in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
“Thailand’s market is too small. 60 million [people] is not enough as scale, so some companies are now thinking about an ASEAN strategy: produce somewhere and then use that factory to export everywhere across Southeast Asia,” Kobsak Pootrakool, director and senior executive vice president of Bangkok Bank, told The Jakarta Post in an interview.
Thailand’s economic growth had slowed to around 1.9 percent in the second quarter of 2026, while rising labor costs and limited scale at home are prompting manufacturers to shift assembly to lower-cost economies such as Cambodia and Laos and look overseas for growth opportunities, he added.
Bangkok Bank, which has operated in Indonesia since 1968 and acquired private lender Permata Bank in 2020, is using its local network to connect Thai companies with Indonesian partners and distribution channels.
The bank brought nearly 37 Thai executives and investors to Jakarta this week for its third business-matching trip to Indonesia, as Thai companies explore new opportunities in the country.
The delegation spans sugar, energy drinks, plastic packaging, poultry and agriculture, including machinery, as well as a convenience store operator looking to source Indonesian products to sell in Thai markets.
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Indonesia’s large domestic market could justify to set up a local production, while import restrictions and quotas had further prompted some Thai businesses to consider investing locally rather than exporting directly from Thailand, Kobsak said on Tuesday.