Some people believe that BOI promotion is something you win or lose on the strength of your business plan. That is not how it works. BOI only promotes activities it has specifically listed. Here is what actually qualifies, what each group is worth, and how to check where your own activity lands.
This is one of the most important things you need to check before applying for the promotion. The Thailand Board of Investment does not evaluate your company as a whole. It looks at your specific activity against its list and grants, or denies, promotion activity by activity.
Two company founders in the same industry can get completely different outcomes depending on whether their actual work matches a listed activity. So the first thing to check when you look at BOI promotion isn’t capital or paperwork. It’s this question: “is my activity even on the list?“
Key Takeaways
- BOI only promotes activities that appear on its own list, sorted into groups from A1+ down to B. There is no general application for a business BOI has not defined an activity for.
- The group attached to your activity decides your corporate income tax (CIT) exemption, not anything about your company itself.
- A1+ gets 10 to 13 years of CIT exemption with no cap. A1 gets 8 years, also uncapped. A2, A3 and A4 get 8, 5 and 3 years, each capped at the amount you actually invested.
- Group B gets no CIT exemption, but still keeps import duty relief on machinery and raw materials, plus BOI’s non-tax privileges.
- Every promoted project also needs at least THB1,000,000 in capital, excluding land and working capital. Knowledge-based activities are measured on annual salary spend instead.
- The list is organised into four divisions, from agriculture and the bio-circular-green (BCG) economy through advanced manufacturing, basic and supporting industries, and digital, creative and high-value services. BOI updates it by announcement, so check your specific activity rather than assume from the sector.
Why “Any Business Qualifies” Is the Wrong Assumption
The Board of Investment is a government agency, and its job is to decide which activities Thailand wants to attract at any given time. BOI publishes a specific, numbered list of promoted activities on its website, and it updates that list as the country’s priorities change.
The list shifts over the years as those priorities move. Under the current 2023–2027 strategy, the focus is on activities that serve BOI’s three pillars: Innovative, Competitive, and Inclusive. The list itself is organised into four divisions.
Inside those four divisions, the activities are sorted into ten numbered categories, running from agriculture and biotechnology through to digital, creative, and high-value services. Each category holds its own list of activities, and each activity carries its own set of conditions.
As of mid-2026, that list runs to more than 300 individual activities. If your business matches one of those numbered activities, you have a route in. If it does not, there is nothing to apply for, no matter how strong the business otherwise is.
The Four Divisions on BOI’s List
BOI publishes its promoted activities as four numbered sections, one for each of its investment promotion divisions. Every promoted activity sits inside one of these four:
- Section 1: BCG Industries covers agriculture and food, biotechnology, and medical activities. This is the bio-circular-green cluster, and it carries particular weight under the current strategy.
- Section 2: Advanced Manufacturing Industries covers machinery and automation systems, automotive (including battery electric vehicles), space and aerospace, defense, and electrical and electronics. This is the largest share of promoted activities, with the more technically demanding work pulled into the higher A groups.
- Section 3: Basic and Supporting Industries covers minerals, materials, steel and iron, and plastics, the foundational inputs that feed the other sectors.
- Section 4: Digital, Creative Industries and High-Value Services covers digital and smart-city activities, light and creative industries, tourism, logistics, and targeted services such as regional headquarters. Digital and R&D-heavy activities tend to cluster in the top groups because they carry the innovation weight BOI is trying to attract.
None of this means every activity inside a division gets the same group. The division tells you which part of the list to look in. The specific numbered activity within it, for example 8.1 for digital technology or 1.1 for upstream agriculture, is what actually determines your group and your conditions.
Good to know: Plenty of businesses simply aren’t on the BOI’s list such as restaurants, retail shops, most buy-and-resell trading, general consulting. If that’s your business, BOI isn’t your route, and it’s far better to know that on day one than three months into an application.
Every Activity Comes With Its Own Conditions
Finding your activity on the list is only half the job. Every activity BOI promotes carries its own conditions, and you have to meet them before BOI will promote the project and before you can touch the tax break. The conditions are written for that exact work, so two activities sitting on the same list can look nothing alike.
The table below shows some of the most popular activities we see foreign founders apply under, with the main condition attached to each.
Look across the rows and watch how far the condition swings, along with the group and the tax break, even within services.
| Activity | Group | CIT exemption | Main condition to meet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research and development (R&D) | A1 | 8 years, no cap | Spend at least THB1,500,000 a year on salaries for newly hired Thai research staff, or invest THB1,000,000 or more. |
| Software or digital-platform development | A2 | 8 years, capped at your investment | Spend at least THB1,500,000 a year on salaries for the Thai IT staff you hire after applying, not on equipment. |
| International Business Center (IBC), the regional-HQ setup | B | None | Paid-up capital of at least THB10,000,000 and at least 10 skilled staff. |
| Trade and Investment Support Office (TISO) | B | None | At least THB10,000,000 a year in selling and administrative expenses. |
As you can see from the table above, each one has different requirements and gives different benefits.
This is exactly why you check the specific activity, not the sector. And the group has nothing to do with how big or serious your company is. It tracks how much technology and national priority BOI attaches to that exact activity.
What You Also Need to Clear
Matching a listed activity and its conditions gets you in the door. On top of that, every promoted project has to clear a set of baseline requirements that apply across the board.
- Minimum capital: at least THB1,000,000 invested in the project, excluding land and working capital, unless BOI has set a higher figure for that particular activity. Knowledge-based activities are measured differently, against a minimum annual salary-expense threshold rather than a capital figure.
- Debt-to-equity: new projects are expected to keep a ratio of no more than 3:1.
- Feasibility study: projects above THB2,000,000,000, excluding land and working capital, need a formal feasibility study as part of the application.
We cover the capital rules in full, including how the knowledge-based salary test works, in our guide to BOI minimum capital.
Good to know: the group is attached to the activity, not to your company. Two companies doing the same promoted activity get the same group and the same headline tax treatment.
Understanding Group Incentives
The division tells you what you do. The group tells you what you get. Every activity sits in a group, from A1+ at the top down to B, and that group, not anything about your company, sets the size of your reward.
The headline benefit is a corporate income tax (CIT) exemption: how many years you pay no CIT on the promoted activity’s profit, and whether there is a ceiling on the total amount exempted.
| Group | Corporate income tax exemption |
|---|---|
| A1+ | 10 to 13 years, no cap on the amount |
| A1 | 8 years, no cap on the amount |
| A2 | 8 years, capped at 100% of the investment |
| A3 | 5 years, capped at 100% of the investment |
| A4 | 3 years, capped at 100% of the investment |
| B | No CIT exemption, but keeps import duty relief and non-tax incentives |
There is also a layer above the headline years such as:
- merit-based add-ons that extend the exemption for extra R&D spend
- setting up in a designated province
- building inside a promoted industrial estate.
You can find out more in our breakdown of BOI incentives explained.
How to Check Your Own Activity
BOI’s list isn’t a set of loose buckets you can talk your way into. It’s a specific, numbered list, and each activity comes with its own conditions on top of whatever its group is worth. So the job isn’t to describe roughly what you do. It’s to match your actual business model to the exact activity BOI has written down.
BOI publishes the whole thing on its official activities page. It’s a long, technical set of documents sorted by those ten categories, which is exactly why most people have someone map their activity for them rather than read it cover to cover.
Good to know: BOI regularly issues announcements that add, tweak, or drop activities, so something that qualified last year isn’t guaranteed the same treatment now.
If you are not sure which group your business would fall into, or whether your activity is on the list at all, you can check whether you qualify in a few minutes, or get matched with a firm that can confirm your activity and group before you commit to an application.
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