Date - February 8, 2010
The Board of Investment (BoI) secretary-general Atchaka Siboonruang said that she was looking at attracting more Chinese investors into Thailand as the Chinese people’s outward investments are on the rise.
“This year BoI has a hard job to do in order to persuade Chinese investors continuously and we have to try to prevent value of investment to be not lower than last year. During January 2010 there is not much requests to support investment from China because some investors have presented the requests to BoI during December 2009 in order to invest on time with Thai Investment Year,” she said.
She also pointed that Chinese investors are going to invest in Thailand more because China has lots of funds and Chinese government has supported their investors to invest in foreign countries for both finding raw materials and growing markets. This is a factor that let many Chinese investors come to Thailand within 2009, and BoI has a plan to establish BoI office for the 4th place in Kunming, China, in order to attract more investments from China.
Meanwhile the BoI said Japanese investors still want to invest in Thailand as their top market. Last year, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of Japanese investors were 266 projects and worth 77,376 million Baht.
The second is Chinese investors for 25 projects, worth 43, 289 million Baht, which is higher than 2008 that saw just 21 projects, worth 1,505 million Baht. So, this is a great progress of Chinese investors. Most of them come to invest in natural gas power plants and processed cassavas and rubbers.