The car in Southeast Asia

The demand for cars is rising in most parts of Southeast Asia, especially in the larger cities. National governments thus find themselves in a dilemma. They are anxious to promote local car manufacturing to create employment, reduce imports, and stimulate local components industries. In their attempts to do so they have faced the problem of limited markets and a fragmented industry, and support from Japanese multinational corporations has been an essential means of overcoming these. On the other hand the car is a major contributor to urban congestion which road building and traffic management measures cannot entirely alleviate. If car restraint policies are to avoid penalising rural people and denying mobility to those who aspire to it, they will have to be carefully targeted against the use (not ownership) of cars in these urban areas. Politically this has been difficult to achieve.