Can a 100% foreign-owned manufacturing project get BOI?

01Why 100% foreign ownership is usually not the obstacle

This is one of the questions Chinese-invested manufacturers coming into Thailand ask us most often. Owners worry that a wholly foreign-owned company is shut out from the start. What follows works through four checks, including one exception that appeared recently and that a lot of published material has not caught up with.

Foreign-owned business in Thailand sits under the Foreign Business Act, which restricts foreign shareholding in certain lines of business. One of the things promoted status does is lift some of those ordinary restrictions under defined conditions — a promoted project may get easier treatment on foreign shareholding and on land rights. See how foreign shareholding works under the Foreign Business Act.

For manufacturing specifically: a large number of manufacturing categories carry no foreign shareholding ratio, so a wholly foreign-owned company can apply normally, and projects that sit in the directions Thailand is encouraging usually have more room to work with. The conditions differ from category to category, though. Check your own category against the official activity list rather than assuming that manufacturing as a whole is fine.

02The recent exception: three activities now require majority Thai shareholding

On a Thai law firm's reading, applications submitted from 1 September 2025 face a new condition on three promoted activities: Thai individuals must hold more than half the shares. The three are leather and artificial leather bags and luggage (footwear excluded), furniture and parts, and printed matter. Projects inside the border special economic zones are exempt.

Note what kind of rule this is. It changes the conditions for promotion; it does not change the law on foreign market access. If you do not apply for promotion, these businesses are still governed by the same shareholding rules as before. So the question is not whether foreigners can still be in this line of business. It is whether the promotion route is worth the shareholding you give up — and that is a sum to actually work out.

The wider lesson: promotion conditions and the incentive catalogue move with each announcement, and what you read today may already have been superseded by the time you file. Once the activity category is settled, go back to the official announcements in force and work through every condition currently attached to it — not only the incentives, but shareholding, investment size, value added and technology requirements as well.

03Four checks that settle it for your own project

Whether your project can be wholly foreign-owned comes down to four checks, in this order.

• Fix the activity category. One business can map to several codes; where it lands changes which conditions apply.
• Read every condition currently attached to that category in the official announcements — incentives, yes, but also shareholding, investment size, value added and technology requirements.
• Check whether your site qualifies for an exemption. Projects inside the border special economic zones are exempt from some of the new conditions.
• Then decide whether to take the promotion route at all. If your category requires Thai majority shareholding, that is a calculation to run, not a question of principle.

The answer turns on which activity category you land in, rather than on the fact that the business is manufacturing. Categories carrying a new Thai shareholding requirement have appeared recently, and judging from older material will give you the wrong answer.

04Three questions that matter more than whether you are eligible

Three questions matter more here than whether you are eligible.

• Picking the right activity category. One business often maps to several categories, and the category drives both the conditions and the tier. Choose the wrong one and the investment projections and the structuring work behind them may have to be redone.
• Arguing for the right tier. The tier sets how many years of corporate income tax exemption you get and the cap on it. You make that case with the technical plan and the investment figures — but the tier is what the review grants under the catalogue in force, not a matter of negotiating skill. See how the tiers differ.
• Keeping it aligned with the shareholding structure. Promoted status can affect foreign shareholding and land arrangements, so it should be designed alongside the corporate structure rather than after it.

05The order we suggest working in

First, confirm which activity category the business belongs to and the tier you are aiming at. Second, go back to the official announcements in force and check every condition attached to that category, including whether there is a shareholding requirement. Third, prepare the material that supports the tier assessment — technical plan, equipment list, investment budget. Fourth, bring the shareholding structure and the site together into a complete filing package.

Doing this out of order usually means doing it twice. Treating the tier assessment as an input to the investment projections and the structuring work, rather than something you catch up on later, is what keeps a project from doubling back. Companies that register first and think about promotion and shareholding second often end up amending their articles, changing the shareholder structure, or setting up a different entity altogether.

Which activity code your project actually falls under, whether the new rule reaches it, and whether the border special economic zone exemption applies all have to be checked against what the business actually does and what the investment plan says — and re-checked against the official announcements before you file. What the BOI filing engagement covers.