Thailand’s Proposals for the OPV and LTV acquisitions of the Philippines

The HTMS Krabi OPV of the Royal Thai Navy, Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Here is a very interesting Article not only on Thailand’s Defense Self Reliance Program, but their Proposals as well for the Philippine Military. They are planning to build more Drones and Firearms on their own, and also planning to export Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) and Light Tactical Vehicles (LTV) to the Philippines.

‘OPV’

This has been previously reported before in other News Reports, but some more details have come up here for their Proposal to build OPVs for the Philippine Navy (PN). The deal will be thru a Government to Government (G2G) Contract, and they propose building 6 OPVs, 2 will be built in Thailand while the remaining 4 in the Philippines. 

‘LTV’

The acquisition of 900 LTVs for the Philippine Army (PA) has been approved, the deal will also be G2G and a Thai Company has been shortlisted as among the possible Suppliers. 

‘My Comments’

The last Report I saw with new developments about the PN OPVs was in May 2020 when a One News Article said that Austal had already won the bidding, but there was no mention of the Contract being signed then yet. 

This new Report from Thailand suggests that indeed no Contract has been signed yet and that the race for the OPVs is still open up to now. 

Thailand is reportedly offering a modified version of their Krabi class Vessel (which in turn is based on the River class Vessels of the Royal Navy) for the PN's OPV as per previous News Reports.

‘GDP and Population’

One thing to remember here on why Thailand is able to afford these kinds of Programs is that they have a much better economy than the Philippines in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), in fact they are only second to Indonesia in South East Asia (SEA) in terms of GDP. 

Their GDP in 2019 was at Usd 1.38 Trillion compared to our Usd 1.03 Trillion. They also have a much lower Population than ours, only 68 million in 2018 while ours was at 107 million, resulting in a much higher GDP per Capita Income for them and thus generally a better quality of life. 

SOURCES: 
* DTI introduces four Pilot Projects to concretely promote Self-Reliance and Revenues 
* AFP Modernization Bits and Pieces – May 12, 2020 {Archived Link}
* Thailand's DTI and Cho Thavee Public Ltd. Co. to develop a Shipbuilding Monitoring System for the PN's OPV {Archived Link}
* Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the ASEAN Countries from 2010 to 2020 {Archived Link}
* Total Population of the ASEAN Countries from 2008 to 2018 {Archived Link}

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