Suzuki Motor is said to have agreed to build a new plant in Myanmar’s Thilawa special economic zone (SEZ), just south of the country’s capital city Yangon, according to reports in Japan.
The company is understood to be preparing to start construction of a new factory later this year on a 20 hectare plot in Thilawa with completion scheduled for 2017. It is expected to have the capacity to assembly 10,000 vehicles annually, including the Ertiga compact MPV, from imported knocked down (KD) kits.
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The plant will initially employ 300 people and total investment is expected to amount to “several billion yen”.
Suzuki currently assembles around 150 Carry pickup trucks per month at a small factory in Yangon. The plant was built in 1998 but was inactive for much of the 2000s due to depressed economic conditions.
It resumed output in the last few years, following a relaxation of economic sanctions by the west as the military regime made progress towards democratisation. The country’s economy has grown rapidly in the last few years, driven by a sharp increase in inward investment.
