The year 2010 was filled with surprise in terms of economic and business expectation, news and statistics. At some point in time at the early part of the year the Thai economy was surging ahead, with various economic sectors performing well though some others were struggling to remain afloat and anticipating things to become worse. Yet a number of events turned the general expectations upside down.

On the macro regional and global levels, the bright spot was that the Asian regional emerging markets were all growing at reasonably high rates and inter-regional transactions were expanding, and consequently have been keeping the whole regional economy going strong. Nevertheless the western developed economies continued to experience the ups and downs in economic growth, employment, output and income, largely as a result of the unsettling economic and financial conditions in the United States, European Union and Japan.

In the United States, basic industry such as the automotive sector was recovering but property and housing sector continued to vacillate between sporadic slump and temporary resurgence; in addition, where economic growth did occur it was not accompanied by corresponding increase in employment. Furthermore, its precarious public finance characterized by staggering public debts and the weak commercial banking sector did not exactly inspire confidence in consumers and investors alike.

In the European Union, the economic conditions were plagued by several countries' worrisome economic performance - Spain's economic stagnation; Italy's troubled economy and introduction of austerity economic policies; Germany's budget deficits and growing reluctance to extend financial assistance to other European nations; Greece's sovereign debt crisis and deficit budget; Portugal's low rateof economic growth versus high level of public debt; the uncertain economic stability of the Baltic states and Iceland financial sector's predicament, all the European Union's potential members - to mention just a few. These were some of the problematic phenomena which operated to add to economic uncertainty and financial instability in the European Union's economy.

Japan, despite the quick comeback from the natural disaster of a few months ago, the overall economy still has not fully recovered and revitalized itself from what is called the "two lost decades" and an ageing population and a decreasing birth rate offer no consolation to hope for domestic-consumption driven economic resurgence.

Under this scenario, still most of the emerging markets have been growing strongly. This reflects the fact that the positive effects of fast-growing emerging markets far outweighed the negative effects of the slow-growing rich-world economies and that the decoupling process has effectively insulated the emerging markets in the East from the financial disturbances in the western developed economies and rendered them economically more dependent on each other and less dependent on the West.

Under the circumstance Thailand has reaped the benefits of being part of the emerging economies. Last year the growth rate was over 4 percent; exports performed extremely well on both agricultural and manufacturing fronts and domestic production also expanded reasonably well - all these positive trends, in spite of continuing acute and increasing labour shortage which surprisingly failed to hinder the expansion in industrial production.

Yet, beneath all this promising overall economic and business trend, lies a less comforting picture, that is, economic growth was unevenly distributed and basically associated with large industrial and commercial enterprises while their smaller counterparts or the so-called SME were struggling against depressed market demand, shortage of finance, rising costs and heated competition. Several commercial banks have decided that the SME, in general, are lost causes and walked away. Numerous SME will be driven into oblivion if the current situation lingers on for much longer. Another important characteristic of the SME is that although they do not contribute an outsized proportion to the GDP they do deploy the largest portion of the labour force; hence future emergence of additional adverse cost and price factors can lead to widespread unemployment, losses of output, income and domestic purchasing power, especially among the labour-intensive SME operations, and correspondingly to a lower growth rate.

For the year 2011, there is reason to believe that similar conditions will continue to prevail, albeit with one big difference the populist economic policies of the new government, promised during the election campaign. Already, serious concern is voiced by various segments in the private sector, that how these policies are going to be financed, how much public borrowing is required and how much the interest rates are going to be affected. Another question is how public spending at such a large scale will crowd out private investment. And then, if such large-scale spending is not altogether possible in its entirety, how and how much public spending intended will be scaled down, hopefully without negative political consequences from the disappointed voters. How and in what timeframe the new government will implement the much- publicized minimum wage law. How and how much prices and cost of living will spiral. How the foreign exchange rate will respond to such policies and huge public borrowing because its changes will carry significant implications for imported raw materials and capital equipment, and energy costs. These are the uncertainty and doubts that the private sector do have in mind but not yet have the answers until policies were eventually put into effect.

In year 2011, government policies and their implementation are to be considered as the single, most important development which overrides all other economic issues. Of no less importance is the expectation of the domestic and foreign business, economic and financial communities, regarding the potential success or failure of various economic policies, prior to and after actual implementation. These are matters which need to be closely monitored and thoroughly analyzed, so that TTTC would be able to respond effectively and navigate through uncertainty and risks expected to be thus generated, and gear the company towards another successful year in 2011. At the same time we will continue to do what the company has been doing so well in the past that is, to improve customers' relation and services the best we could and look for new businesses, new customers and new markets, streamline our operation and more efficient and effective way of doing business under this uncertain times.

The company would like to express deep appreciation for the strong support from Toyota Tsusho Corporation, various business partners, customers and suppliers, and the dedication and the hard work of the company's management team and staff who are the main reason for the strength and success of Toyota Tsusho ( Thailand ) Company Limited through the years.