The country's car exports in January recorded the lowest volume in 93 months, totalling 65,295 cars, a sharp drop of 20% year-on-year as overall economic sentiment at import destinations remained downbeat from the US-China trade war.
On Thursday the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) reported monthly figures for car production, sales and exports for January.
Surapong Paisitpatanapong, spokesman of the FTI's automotive industry club, said shipments declined in most regions: Oceania, Asia, Europe, North America, Central and South America, and Africa.
But exports to the Middle East grew last month with 10,818 cars, a 22.4% rise, he said.
The shipment value in January was 32.3 billion baht, a year-on-year dip of 20.9%.
Mr Surapong said local sales in January totalled 71,688 cars, a drop of 8.2%.
Sales in January contracted for the eighth month in a row. The first contraction began last June.
"Local banks are still tightening auto loan conditions and restricting their loan approvals for Thai car buyers, so local distributors cannot deliver cars and close the sales," he said.
"Some new models were launched last November and there is a lead time between previous and new models, so each car maker is accelerating production from early 2020 to deliver all back orders."
With contractions for both exports and local sales, the country's car production in January dropped 13% year-on-year to 156,266 units.
But the January output increased 16.4% from December.
FTI has a conservative outlook for car production in 2020, staying at 2 million units because of many global headwinds. This projection is a decrease of 0.68% from production in 2019.
Of the targeted production in 2020, 1 million is projected for each segment -- local sales and exports, down 0.75% and 5.13% year-on-year, respectively.
Mr Surapong said the club is optimistic about the let-up in the US-China trade war after both nations signed the phase one deal in January to cut tariffs on each others' goods.
"The overall situation seems to be better than the club's expectation, so FTI believes the country's automotive industry can benefit from this positive sign," he said.
"The club is closely monitoring the global trade dispute before revising the automotive projection for 2020."
In 2019, the country's car production dropped 7.1% to 2.01 million units, pressured by contractions in both local sales and exports.
Local sales for last year totalled 1.01 million cars, down 3.3% from 2018. Exports in 2019 stood at 1.05 million units, down 7.59% year-on-year. The shipment value stood at 546 billion baht, down 8.21%.