Chonburi or Rayong: what it takes to get the EEC incentives

01Three gates behind "we are in the EEC, so we get the incentives"

The EEC promotion scope defined by BOI Announcement No. 17/2565 is exactly three provinces: Chachoengsao, Chonburi and Rayong. Being inside the three provinces is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

• The activity category has to be inside the scope. The EEC extra entitlements are open only to target activities in tiers A1+ through A4, and there is a separate list of categories to which the measure does not apply — issued as its own document and updated by announcement (the carrying document is named in the table at the foot). Go back to the original and check it line by line before filing.
• The extra entitlements run on two axes, and both can be taken. One is human resource development or technology research, development and innovation — one of those two, not both. The other is project location. A project that meets the conditions on each axis may hold both. This is the point most often misread as an either/or, and that misreading is how a project ends up taking less than it was entitled to.
• The real either/or sits inside the location axis. Either an officially designated EEC zone, or an industrial estate or promoted industrial zone inside the three provinces — one branch only. The form of the bonus also varies by tier, and some tiers get no bonus at all under the industrial estate branch. When an estate's sales team says "one extra year", check it against your own tier before you count on it.

Stacking has a ceiling too. A project whose corporate income tax exemption period already exceeds the threshold set in the announcement cannot take further corporate income tax incentives under Section 35(1) of the Investment Promotion Act. The threshold number of years is in the table at the foot, and the announcement in force on the day you file governs.

The two sets of incentives cannot be claimed twice over for the same project. The measure originally provided that once the EEC Policy Committee had announced the grant of rights for a designated zone, the application period for promotion in that zone was treated as closed. Announcement No. 5/2567 rewrote it: a company may still apply for promotion under the Investment Promotion Act, but the same project may not apply for duplicate incentives.

02Choose between the two provinces on supply chain, not on reputation

On the annual factory statistics used by the EEC Master Plan, the two provinces have visibly different industrial bases. Chonburi's estates are led by automotive and auto parts and by electrical equipment, and the province's largest category by investment value is manufacture and repair of vehicles and equipment. Rayong's estates are led by petrochemicals, and its largest category is chemicals and chemical products. The question is not which province is "better" — it is who your upstream sits next to, and who can carry your hazardous chemicals and your utilities.

Rayong carries one more layer. Under the clause on prevention of impact on environmental quality in BOI's investment promotion criteria, a location-specific additional condition is singled out: a project sited within Rayong province must comply with Board of Investment Announcement No. Por 1/2554, the policy on promotion of industrial investment in the Rayong province area. Because it is filed under environmental protection, it is easily taken for something that only matters once production has started. It belongs at the siting stage.

03Land is the hard constraint: what is left, and inside versus outside an estate

There is a limited number of promotion zones in industrial-estate form, and what remains is very unevenly spread. On EECO's current annual report basis, the remaining "developable" area is only a small fraction of the saleable and leasable area, and several mature Chonburi estates are already at zero (figures in the table at the foot). A project that needs a whole plot loses twice. The negotiating position is not on your side; worse, the schedule gets held hostage in reverse — if the land does not close, construction, the duty-free machinery import window and the opening deadline all have to be rebuilt.

Put the plant outside an estate and the location bonus branch simply does not exist. Among the operating factories in the three provinces, those outside estates are in fact the majority — building outside is not a problem in itself, but the location bonus recognises only designated zones and industrial estates or promoted industrial zones. The legal route for foreign land holding differs too: a promoted company holding land for its promoted activity under the Investment Promotion Act, and holding land inside an industrial estate under the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand Act, sit under two separate sets of rules, and the deadline for disposing of the land after the project ends is not the same. Holding land is an exception granted by statute, not something a foreign investor has by right. And not every promoted category still carries it — on a law firm's reading, several metal products, industrial chemicals and industrial plastic products categories have had the foreign land-purchase privilege withdrawn (the categories, the effective-date basis and the source are in the table at the foot). That happens to cover a large share of the auto parts, metal parts and plastic parts projects on this corridor. Check your own category code first, then go and negotiate land.

04Labour and power belong in the same calculation as the land price

Chonburi carries the heaviest load of the three. On the EEC Master Plan basis, this one province accounts for close to half of all electricity consumed across the EEC, the highest of the three provinces, and industry is already the bulk of EEC electricity use (figures in the table at the foot). The other side of mature infrastructure is that you are competing with your neighbours for the same power and the same people. The planning document itself concedes that labour in this area is concentrated in services and that high-skilled labour is short.

Do not work from an old wage figure. Thailand's minimum daily wage is set in bands by province and adjusted by announcement of the National Wage Committee and the Ministry of Labour, and the eastern industrial belt sits on the higher side. The current band and its effective date are whatever the Ministry of Labour's announcement in force says. What you save on the land price can come back out on people and power.

05Get the order wrong and the work in front of it is wasted

The density of Chinese-invested companies is a real advantage on this corridor. On the Ministry of Commerce guide's basis, the number of Chinese-invested companies registered as investing in Thailand is already substantial, and Rayong has an estate that Thai and Chinese companies have developed and run together for years. But an easy supply chain does not mean easy compliance. Do not copy the filing template from the plant next door — the promoted category, the goods and the actual processing steps are all different. Origin and treaty preference eligibility have to be determined case by case on your own goods, and the evidence chain should be designed before production starts.

The practical order is four steps: lock the activity category and the target tier; decide which branch of the location axis you are taking and work the bonus out against your own tier; then look at specific plots and at what land is left in the estates; then work backwards from the target production start date to the deadlines for land, the machinery import window and the opening date. Picking a plot first and assessing the tier afterwards is the most expensive rework on this corridor.

BOI's Regional Investment and Economic Center 4 sits at Laem Chabang Industrial Estate in Si Racha, Chonburi. CTAC Thailand's advisers are based in Chonburi, with Rayong inside the same service coverage. Which province, which branch of the location axis, and whether Rayong's additional condition applies to you are all things to check item by item against the activity category and the site plan.