Tata Motors Ltd., India’s biggest Truck and bus maker, will invest 1.3 billion baht ($43 million) in a Thai factory to produce pickup trucks as part of the company’s strategy of overseas expansion.

“This will go mainly towards equipment for the assembly facility,” Ajit Venkataraman, chief executive officer of the Thai unit said in a statement today in Bangkok. “We expect to roll out the pickup trucks in 2008.”

Tata is expanding in Thailand as economic growth spurs demand for vehicles. Tata will compete with Isuzu Motors Ltd., the biggest maker of Pickup Trucks in the country. The plant has the capacity to build 35,000 trucks a year, Tata Motors said.

The venture is owned 70 percent by Tata Motors and 30 percent by Thonburi Automotive Assembly Plant Co. Tata’s Managing Director Ravi Kant said in December last year that the unit will produce 30,000 units annually after three years.

Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy expanded 4.9 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 from a year earlier, compared with a 4.3 percent gain in the second quarter, the government said Monday.

New vehicle sales in Thailand, Southeast Asia’s biggest automobile market, rose 3.3 percent in the third quarter, rebounding from a 6.4 percent drop in the previous three months, according to Toyota Motor Corp.’s Thai unit.