Thailand BOI says 2024 investment applications soar 35% to 10-year high

The Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) said that applications for investment promotion in 2024 soared 35% in value to 1.14 trillion baht (US$33 billion), the highest level since 2014, led by large foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in data centers, cloud services, as well as semiconductor and advanced electronics manufacturing.

The digital sector, which includes data centers and cloud services, topped last year for the first time the sectorial rankings by value with 150 projects worth a combined 243.3 billion baht in pledged investment. Major projects in this sector in 2024 included applications to setup large data centers by units of large tech and cloud services companies such as Google (Alphabet) from the U.S., Australia's NextDC, India's CtrlS Datacenters, and Singapore-based GDS IDC Services PTE Ltd.

The electronics and electrical appliances (E&E) sector, which had attracted the largest share of investment in recent years, came in second last year with 407 projects worth 231.7 billion baht. Noticeable large projects in this sector last year included an investment by a unit of Foxsemicon Integrated Technology Inc. (Fiti Group) to build a factory to make high-precision machinery parts and equipment for the semiconductor industry, and an investment by FT1 Corporation, a Thailand-Hong Kong SAR-Singapore wafer manufacturing joint venture between Hana Microelectronics and PTT Group to produce silicon carbide wafers.

The automotive sector came in third with 309 projects worth 102.4 billion baht. Agriculture and food ranked fourth with 329 projects worth 87.6 billion baht, followed by petrochemicals and chemicals with 235 projects worth a combined value of 49.1 billion baht.