🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Thailand’s investment incentives help drive its data center growth

• Thailand’s Board of Investment (BOI), the government agency that approves and promotes large investments, offers incentives that make the country more appealing to foreign firms, including data center and hosting investors such as TikTok System Thailand. 1
• For BOI-promoted activities, firms can hold 100% foreign ownership and gain land ownership rights. That departs from the Foreign Business Act, which usually limits foreign control in some sectors. 1
• Eligible projects can also get corporate income tax (CIT) exemptions for as long as eight years under some BOI-promoted categories, which often shapes the project’s financial model. 2
• The richest tax breaks come with tight rules. They go to high-efficiency facilities with a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.3 or less, a common measure of data center energy efficiency. 1

Thailand is working to ease a power hurdle for AI and data centers

• Direct renewable power purchases refer to a policy shift in Thailand’s energy system that expands renewable electricity access for data centers. 3
• Across Asia-Pacific, planned data center growth is set to put more strain on clean power supplies in leading markets. 4
• Thailand is piloting a 2,000 megawatt Direct Power Purchase Agreement (Direct PPA/DPPA) program. It would let qualifying users, including BOI-promoted data centers, buy renewable power from private producers through the grid under a Third Party Access (TPA) framework. That framework allows outside suppliers to use the existing transmission network instead of relying only on traditional utility procurement. 3
• That program matters for competition. It helps meet the sustainability demands of global technology companies and could strengthen Thailand’s position against regional rivals. 5