Thailand Plans to Continue Purchasing Chinese Tanks

15 Januari 2019

VT-4 tank of the Royal Thai Army (photo : RTA)

The army requires the approval of the cabinet for the purchase of 14 VT-4 battle tanks from China worth more than 2.3 billion baht, an army source said. This will be the third batch of VT-4 tanks purchased from China Ordnance Industries Group Corporation Limited. According to the source, each tank costs about 167 million baht. 

The first batch of 28 such tanks was acquired in 2016 at a price of 4.9 billion Baht, and the second batch of 11 tanks, which arrived in 2017, was estimated at 2 billion Baht. 

A source in the army purchasing committee said that the army wants to buy more VT-4 because of their satisfactory performance.

According to the source, before the transition to the VT-4, the army tried unsuccessfully to purchase T-84 Oplot-M tanks from the Ukrainian Ukroboronprom because of the unrest caused by the conflict with Russia.

(Andrei BT)