BOI’s New Investment Promotion Strategy (2023 - 2027)

On 8 December 2022, Thailand’s Board of Investment (“BOI”), one of the Thai government’s agencies set up to aid the fulfillment of key development schemes, announced its new investment promotion strategy for the next five years (2023 - 2027) in the Announcement No. 8/2565 Re: Policies and Criteria for Investment Promotion (“Announcement”). This new investment promotion strategy replaces the previous eight-year plan (2015 - 2022), i.e., the Announcement No. 2/2557 Re: Policies and Criteria for Investment Promotion dated 3 December 2014. The content of this Announcement is now in full effect and it applies to all applications for investment promotion submitted with the BOI as from 3 January 2023.

Under the new strategy, the BOI sets out to focus on the following three core aspects deemed essential to the progress of Thailand’s economy as to promote the “Thailand 4.0” scheme and to move away from an economy dependent on labor and natural resources to more sustainable, high-tech industries:

1) Innovative: driven by technology, innovation, and creativity; 

2) Competitive: have the ability to compete, adapt quickly, and generate high growth; and 

3) Inclusive: consider environmental and social sustainability as well as promote inclusiveness and alleviate disparity.

The new investment promotion strategy does not introduce any significant changes to the fundamental criteria in applying for new investment promotion. In fact, some of the key criteria which still apply to applicants include a 20% annual revenue growth projection, the requirement to use new machinery (with limited exemptions for used machinery), the minimum one million THB investment, and a 3:1 debt-to-equity ratio threshold. Nevertheless, although activity-based incentives still remain divided into Groups A and B, and most incentives for each group remain the same, certain new updates were made to this part of the Announcement. For instance, Group A1+ category was added to Group A in order to include incentives, such as a 10 to 13-year corporate income tax (“CIT”) exemption (without setting the tax limit for such exemption), exemption of import duty on machinery, and other non-tax incentives. As for Group B, the incentives still focus only on non-CIT incentives, such as import duty on machinery exemption and other non-tax incentives.; however, Groups B1 and B2 have been removed from the Announcement.

In addition to the Announcement, the BOI also issued another 16 announcements ( announcements No. 9/2565 to No. 24/2565) on 8 December 2022 in order to provide further clarifications on relevant measures, and such announcements also came into force on 3 January 2023. Furthermore, there is one additional announcement that BOI issued on 16 December 2022 ( announcement No. Por. 4/2565) which determines the activities that are not eligible for certain incentives under the BOI announcements No. 11/2465 to 15/2565 and No. 17/2565.

This is intended merely to provide a regulatory overview and not to be comprehensive, nor to provide legal advice. Should you have any questions on this or on other areas of law, please do not hesitate to contact the following:

Nuttaros Tangprasitti
Partner

Pimsiri Harnpanicharoen
Associate