Changing a BOI-promoted project: which route your change takes

01What counts as a project amendment

In its investment promotion guide, the Board of Investment splits amendments to the documents attached to a promotion certificate into two groups, each with its own attachment list:

• Project-specific conditions — registered capital, shareholding structure, product type and business size, factory or business location, increases and reductions in production capacity, and changes in tax value. These are approved by Investment Promotion Divisions 1-4, supported by the division's approval letter and the original promotion certificate; where the project sits under a special measure, evidence of compliance with those conditions is required as well.
• Other matters — office location, company name, and cancellation of the promotion certificate. These take a company covering letter, a copy of the company registration certificate issued by the registrar, and the original promotion certificate.

The filing itself uses a general application form as its cover sheet, with the relevant matter ticked and the matching annex attached. That general form covers nine types of change: product type; capacity increased through additional investment, and capacity reductions; capacity increased on engineering grounds; sale of semi-finished goods and by-products; production process changes and the use of semi-finished raw materials; bringing used machinery into the project; sharing machinery with an existing promoted project; activity category and business scope; and merging promoted projects together.

Outside that general form sit seven matters that require their own dedicated forms: shareholding ratio, relocating or adding and closing a business location, registered capital, capacity gained by extending working hours, business transfer and merger, additional import duty exemption for research and development, and — under a special relief measure — replacing machinery damaged by flooding (introduced by a dedicated BOI announcement; whether it is still open should be checked against the current announcement). The general form carries the code F PA PC 01; the dedicated forms carry their own codes, such as F PA PC 02 / 03 / 09 / 15 / 17. Form versions are revised over time, so the version to use is whichever the current announcement and the BOI system provide at the time of filing.

02One word, different doors: routes and clocks are not shared

Three things behave quite differently once the paperwork moves:

• Ordinary project amendments sit at the administrative level of Investment Promotion Divisions 1-4, with the published line of five days once all required documents have been submitted.
• Matters needing a dedicated form each come with their own form and attachment list. Filing on the wrong form means the file was incomplete from the start — and the five-day clock only starts running once the documents are complete. One of these matters, business transfer and merger, goes a different way entirely (below).
• Business transfer and merger is decided by the Board itself, under Section 56 of the Investment Promotion Act: after a promoted company is dissolved, merged or transferred to another party, the existing certificate stays valid for no more than three months. The new entity must file its application to continue the promoted undertaking inside that window. If the Board considers it appropriate, a new certificate is issued — but carrying only the incentives the original company had not yet used, not a fresh full round. If it does not, the incentives are withdrawn in full.

Two practical points follow. The five days run from a complete file, not from the day you hand the papers in — if anything is missing, the clock never starts. And in a merger or restructuring, the three-month window is already running from the day the deal closes, which is why this work belongs several months before completion, not after it.

03Producing a bit more: one request, three different routes

The single most common request companies bring is also the one most often routed incorrectly. Officially there are three separate paths, and the documentary burden differs sharply:

• More capacity through additional investment — new equipment is being bought, so a financial plan and a machinery investment schedule are required. This is the heaviest of the three.
• More capacity on engineering grounds — no new equipment. Actual output and sales figures for the past three years, an explanation of how capacity was calculated, and machinery specifications or production records are used to show the existing line can already produce more.
• More capacity by extending working hours — neither equipment nor process changes; only hours per day and operating days per year are adjusted. This goes on its own dedicated form and is the lightest of the three.

So the question to settle before anything is filed is simply this: is there new equipment investment in this change or not? It decides the route. One hard line goes with the first path: the new machinery must not have been imported or acquired before the amendment application is filed. Ordering equipment first and filing afterwards is a common and unrecoverable misstep. Note this is a separate rule from the purchase-timing condition that applies when an existing company applies under the industry upgrade measure after its exemption has ended — see the route back to incentives once the CIT exemption is used up; do not read the conditions of one path across to the other.

04Four consequences that get missed

Each of these sits at the end of an approved amendment rather than at the start, which is exactly why they are overlooked:

• Relocation can pull a land sale obligation with it. Land held under promoted status carries its own disposal duty. Alongside the familiar case of a project ending or being transferred — covered in can foreign investors buy land in Thailand — moving out of or reducing the original site, where no other promoted project of the company remains there, means the land must be sold within one year of the amendment being approved. The two situations run from different events, so establish which one you are in before building the timeline.
• Raising foreign shareholding ties back to proof of inbound funds. Once approved, bank evidence of the transfer or deposit of funds from overseas still has to be submitted before the change is written into the certificate conditions.
• Merging promoted projects means every condition is reassessed line by line. Exemption periods and caps, import duty exemptions, location and investment conditions are all reset item by item — not simply added together — and the raw material accounts of the projects concerned have to be combined first.
• The transferor's unused exemptions must be cleared first. Machinery and raw materials the original company has already imported but whose duty exemption has not been used up must be used before the application goes in; otherwise the transferor's release privileges are suspended as soon as it is filed.

Which items on your own certificate count as changes requiring prior approval, which route each one takes, and what a complete set of documents means in your case all have to be checked line by line against the certificate wording and the project's actual position. Timing usually matters more than paperwork here, so it is worth having our advisory team map the route and the dates before anything is changed on the ground. Rules in this area are revised frequently; before acting, refer to the latest official announcements.