Macro-economic / Investment / BoI

Report: Chatrudee Theparat

Flow of foreign investment into Thailand is projected to be robust

The government is confident that the applications from foreign investors for Board of Investment’s (BoI) investment promotion will reach 600 billion baht this year.

Deputy prime minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow

Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow said the investment trend in Thailand would be robust because many projects are planned to submit their applications for an investment promotion here.

“I’m quite confident that the investment applications for the Board of Investment (BoI) promotion will meet 600 billion baht by year-end, close to its value in 2019.”

The data shows Thai and foreign companies filed a total of 784 applications for investment promotion during the first six months of 2022, an increase of 4% from the same period last year, but the combined investment value dropped by 42% year-on-year to 219.7 billion baht.

The BoI board has already approved a large-scale project of Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc., worth 20 billion baht for cloud infrastructure, along with the establishment of AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) which includes three Availability Zones. Currently, the company has 87 Availability Zone in 27 regions globally.

Mr Supattanapong said AWS Region, which will be established in Thailand soon, would help speed up the development of Thailand’s start-ups, government agencies, private sector and non-governmental organizations. AWS has planned to invest 190 billion baht in Thailand for next 15 years.

“The other project is an expansion of a large-scale project of bio-plastic, this company is ranked as one of the global players. The manufacturing plant in Thailand would be the biggest plant in the country.”

Mr Supattanapong said the government is likely to finalize the battery investment package incentives by this year in a bid to draw foreign investment in battery manufacturing in Thailand.

“The battery investment will help fulfill the government’s electrical vehicle ambition as placed previously.”

EVs are expected to account for 30% of the domestic car production or 750,000 units a year in 2030. The government also wants EV batteries to be manufactured in Thailand within three years, along with adding the number of workable charging stations to support EV users during this period.

He said the other industry which the government are approaching to invest domestically is smart electronics, which will help support EVs because such products are a significant part in EVs.

“The government will introduce measures to support wafer fabrication plant to establish factory domestically. The wafer fabrication is the upstream industry of electronics. Apparently, Malaysia and Singapore have also approached this company to invest in their countries.”

He said the investment and tourism industry is considered as one of the main contributors to drive Thai economic growth to reach 3.3%, based on the Bank of Thailand’s forecast.

Mr Supattanapong said additional packages which help spur Thai economy are likely to be proposed the cabinet for approval by mid-November. The packages are the same as the previous measures such as co-payment scheme, “We Travel Together” and shopping measure.

“The Finance Ministry is the agency to prepare stimulus measures to propose the cabinet.”

He said the cabinet yesterday raised the measures to relieve flood victims nationwide.

“Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha ordered the interior ministry to survey the damage and the number of households affected by floods while related agencies were ordered to provide financial support to alleviate victims.”

Separately, the cabinet approved two projects - a construction bridge across Songkhla Lake worth 4.8 billion baht, and a bridge to link between Koh Lanta worth 1.85 billion baht. The projects are expected to be operational within three years and expected after they would promote tourism in the areas.