Thailand Increases Medical Imports and Welcomes Expansion Opportunities

Business News Agency June 1 Thailand is relatively rich in Southeast Asia. Under the promotion of its “tourism medical” new industry and a huge massage industry, advanced diagnostic imaging instruments and massage equipment products are bulk products imported from Thailand. Thailand has now become the largest medical device market in Southeast Asia. As the most dynamic new medical device market in Southeast Asia, Thailand is worthwhile to expand its efforts on medical device manufacturers in China.

High-end products rely on imports

The medical equipment products produced by local companies in Thailand are mainly hygienic materials such as condoms, disposable medical gloves, syringes, surgical sutures, endoscopes, dialyzers, rubber plasters, bandages, and cotton wool. In addition to the above products used by domestic hospitals, some products are also exported, and the export volume accounts for 90% of their total output. Most of these products are exported to neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.

However, from the point of view of the structure of export medical device products, the degree of development of the local medical device industry in Thailand is relatively backward compared with East Asian countries such as China, Japan and South Korea. Therefore, Thailand's medical devices require long-term and large-scale imports. The United States, Japan, China, and Germany are the top four importers of medical device products in Thailand. Among them, the United States accounts for about 29% of Thailand's imported medical device market, Japan accounts for 17%, China accounts for 15%, Germany accounts for 14%, and other countries and regions in the world export Thailand's medical devices to 25% of the market.

In 2010, Thailand's medical device market accounted for about 23% of the total medical device market in Southeast Asia; imported medical device products are mainly surgical instruments, dental materials and dental surgical instruments, diagnostic imagers, optical spectrum analyzers, implantable devices, and artificial blood vessels. And heart valves, artificial bone joints and so on. From the above list of imported medical device products, it can be seen that the technical level and equipment of Thai hospitals are almost the same as those of Western developed countries.

Due to the depreciation of the Thai baht against the U.S. dollar since the outbreak of the financial crisis in Asia in 1997, most multinational medical device manufacturers have chosen to allow local reputable distributors in Thailand to sell their products on a business basis. Of the approximately 490 company members of the Thailand Medical Device Federation, 80 are medical device manufacturers and the rest are vendors. According to statistics, there are approximately 30 to 40 large foreign medical device distributors in Bangkok.

The annual growth rate is the highest in Southeast Asia

According to a survey report released by the US Department of Commerce, since 2006, the annual growth rate of the medical device market in Thailand is as high as 24%, which is the highest in Southeast Asia. Basically, the medical device market in Thailand relies heavily on imported products, and domestic products are less than 10% of the market. In Thailand, 60% of orders for imported medical device products come from public hospitals and 40% from private hospitals and nursing homes.

Thailand has a large number of imported medical device products in order: general surgical instruments, diagnostic imagers, import volume of about 329 million U.S. dollars, and various x-ray machines (mainly high-definition X-ray products from Siemens), imported Approximately US$142 million; Orthopaedic appliances, implantable devices, and heart valves, etc., with an import volume of approximately US$139 million; dental equipment and denture materials, etc., with an import volume of approximately US$68.8 million; various rehabilitation device products, import volume 57,200,000 US dollars. The total amount of imports is about 726 million U.S. dollars, compared with only 70 million to 80 million U.S. dollars worth of medical device products produced in Thailand.

From the documents published by the US Department of Commerce, it can be seen that in addition to high-definition X-ray machines, blood vessel stents, heart valves and other individual varieties, Thailand's imported medical device products are temporarily uncompetitive, and about 90% of them are all of our country’s strength. The participating products, especially rehabilitation equipment and massage equipment products, are China's bulk export medical device products.

The Thai government also announced earlier that its national healthcare business will invest 1,450 billion baht in 2011. This is the second-biggest per capita health expenditure in Malaysia and Singapore in Southeast Asia. It is expected that Thailand will further increase the import volume of foreign-made medical device products in the next few years. China's medical device companies should seize this opportunity.