Forty years ago, Thailand was known among foreigners as an idyllic beachfront tourist destination, rather than a lucrative investment destination.
Fast-forward aimost four decades, and thailand’s Board of investment is attracting foreign businesses looking for opportunities to tap into a growing list of manufacturing and service industries, Sectors including automotive, alternative energy, biotech,petrochemicals , food processing and electronics are growing and attracting foreign attention. Investment applications have reached an all-time high in the last few years,with $33.5 billion invested in 2012 alone.
The Thailand board of investment (BOI), a government agency started in 1996, has helped spur innovation by decreasing the time of back-and-forth it takes for foreign businesses to operate in Thailand . Companies promoted by the BOI can obtain work permits or visa approval or renewals within three hours, in addition to tax and other incentives offered by the BOI , such as waived restrictions on foreign ownership and exemptions on import duties. For investors, includeing multinationals such as Dow Chemical Co., part of the draw is the tax incentives and a home base for expanding operations in a still-booming Southeast Asia. This Year, Thailand was rated 18th on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index out of 189 economies. The country has become the world’s largest producer of hard disk drives and the world’s 12th largest exporter of food , and world’s 10th largest automotive manufacturer, according to 2013 figures.
Thailand’s growing connectedness is becoming a draw. Infrastructure investment has helped connect Thailand to its neighbors via highways, making it a well-located home base for doing business in neighboring China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar and Malaysia. A high-speed rail network that reaches as southern China is due to open by 2022, and Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport , already Asia’s sixth-busiest , is in the midst of a $2 billion facelift to handle 60 million annual fliers by 2017.