Integrity Legal - Law Firm in Bangkok | Bangkok Lawyer | Legal Services Thailand Back to
Integrity Legal

Legal Services & Resources 

Up to date legal information pertaining to Thai, American, & International Law.

Contact us: +66 2-266 3698

info@integrity-legal.com

ResourcesCorporate and Tax AdvisoryThailand Corporate LawThe Board of Investment (BOI) and the Thailand 4.0 Initiative

The Board of Investment (BOI) and the Thailand 4.0 Initiative

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, we're talking about the BOI or Board of investment and its sort of integral role in the recent initiative, so-called Thailand 4.0, I should say. Basically, the current government here in Thailand and sort of the general policy of the government overall is basically creating an environment here in Thailand, it's got to foster for direct investment in the country obviously. But also basically sort of a kind of like a transition into a new, sort of, era of doing business here in the Kingdom of Thailand.

So what are we talking about? Well, Thailand has for years economically been home to certain manufacturing operations, car parts, certain computer components, then there was also textile manufacturing in Thailand and obviously, things like agriculture which has less of a relation with the prospective foreign direct investment. But in a lot of these cases, in a lot of these circumstances, we're talking about essentially manufacturing and there's nothing wrong with manufacturing but it seems that the current government and the current frame of mind is sort of pushing towards more intelligence-based business. So moving into sort of tax sector, maybe one way to look at it but more away from, I don't want to go ahead and say blue collar because I don't think there's going to be any turning away from allowing manufacturing projects and wanting to have manufacturing projects here in Thailand. But one of the big things I've noticed is the board of investment BOI has been certifying a significant number of firms with respect to things like research and development, R&D, tech, software development, all of this kind of stuff and this is all sort of new autonomy type of initiatives. And this new economy, the reason I think for bringing these sort of new sort of innovative sectors into Thailand is they want to not only diversify the overall economy because Thailand is very heavily export based and when things get a little bit shaky with respect to sort of international exchange rates and things like that, it can have a pretty significant and pretty fast-moving detrimental impact on the economic sector here.

So I think that there's an effort underway by sort of the powers that be, for lack of a better term, to go ahead and encourage sort of diversification into other fields that do not necessarily depend so heavily on exports. I think there's also an initiative underway here to go ahead and bring again certain innovation into the kingdom which will create an atmosphere that will go ahead and perhaps kick-start act as the catalyst for sort of local innovation and local sort of autonomous internal, intra Thailand innovation in all of these sectors moving forward. So essentially sort of a technology exchange if you will and I think that moving forward Thailand is going to be very, very welcoming to businesses and things like R&D, tech, medical and medical technology and innovations connected therewith and I think it's very likely to see in the future that again the results of this welcoming attitude will probably be even more BOI certifications and hopefully more foreign direct investment in these areas here in the Kingdom.