Thailand BOI Approves Investments Worth A Total of US$5 Billion, Including TikTok's Data Hosting Project; Green Lights Revised Incentives for the Bioeconomy

TikTok Pte. Ltd., the Singapore-based unit of the Chinese company, received approval for a 126.8 billion baht investment in data hosting services to support the activities of affiliated companies, with operations expected to start in 2026. TikTok has over 1 billion users around the world.

Projects approved today by the board also include a 3.25 billion baht investment by Siam AI Corporation, a Thai company, in cloud services focusing on artificial intelligence applications.

"TikTok's and Siam AI's investments mark a significant step in enhancing Thailand's digital and AI infrastructure and supporting the national goal of becoming a digital innovation hub in ASEAN," Mr. Narit Therdsteerasukdi, Secretary General of the BOI, said after the meeting, chaired by Mr. Pichai Chunhavajira, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.

TikTok's investment follows the setup in Thailand of a string of large data centers and cloud services projects by companies such as Amazon Web Services and Google (Alphabet) from the U.S., Australia's NextDC, India's CtrlS Datacenters, and Singapore-based GDS IDC Services PTE Ltd.

Thailand's total applications for investment promotion in 2024 soared 35% in value to a 10-year high of 1.14 trillion baht, led by the digital sector, mainly large foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in data centers and cloud services.

Incentives for Sustainable Aviation Fuel Production

In line with the BOI's existing policies to promote Thailand as a bioeconomy hub and to stimulate investment that add value to agricultural raw materials and agricultural waste, the Board approved granting investment promotion privileges to the production of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and Mixed SAF, a ready to use fuel which mixes pure bio SAF with fossil jet fuel to meet industry sustainability requirements and allows use of the mixed fuel without engine modification.

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