The Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand has revealed that the total amount of investment promotion application in 2018 reached 901,770 million baht, which exceeded the original target by 25%. Investment applications in the EEC accounted for more than 680,000 million baht.

Deputy Prime Minister Dr. Somkid Jatusripitak said after a meeting with the Board of Investment (BOI) on investment promotion policies in 2019 that last year BOI received 1,626 investment applications projects with a total value of Baht 901,770 million.

Largest-scale investment projects have been in the areas of petrochemical and electrical vehicle (EV) production.

Both the application number and the investment value were higher than those in 2017, by 3% and 43%, respectively.

In addition, the applications’ value in 2018 was 25% higher than the set target of 720,000 million baht. As many as 84% of the application projects, worth 758,000 million baht in total, were in the targeted industries.

Within that amount, 539,000 million baht was invested in the five new S-Curve industry sectors, which include digital, medical hub, biofuels and biochemicals, robotics and automation, and aviation.

A total value of 219,000 million baht was invested in the first S-Curve industry sectors; namely, agriculture and biotechnology, electrical and electronics, automotive and auto parts, tourism and food processing. Ms. Duangjai Asawachintachit, BOI’s Secretary General, said that in 2019 BOI will continue to focus on marketing activities targeted at investments that will help create more local value-added and bring higher technologies.

A series of support measures have been issued to attract these investments. Proactive FDI-seeking activities will be organized in key targeted areas Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States and Europe.