BANGKOK, July 23 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's overall investment application value grew 37 percent year-on-year to 43.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first half of 2026, driven by massive capital deployments in digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence, official data showed on Thursday.
According to the Thai Board of Investment (BOI), foreign and domestic investment applications reached 1,299 projects between January and June, despite headwinds, particularly geopolitical tensions, energy price volatility, and global supply chain reconfigurations.
By industry classification, the digital sector secured the highest total investment value, followed by electronics and electrical appliances, agriculture and food processing, logistics and high-value services, as well as automotive.
Foreign direct investment applications jumped 80 percent compared with the same period last year to 40.5 billion dollars across 877 projects, concentrated in data centers, cloud services, data hosting, optical transceivers, printed circuit boards, and hard disk drives.
In a statement, BOI Secretary General Narit Therdsteerasukdi said Thailand's investment growth, which remained steady even as the global economy faced real turbulence, reflects strong investor confidence in the country's potential as a base for the industries of the future.
Narit noted that the BOI prioritizes projects delivering concrete structural benefits, including high-skilled employment, technological upskilling, integration of Thai suppliers into global value chains, regional distribution of economic activity, and rapid site operationalization facilitated by the Thailand FastPass mechanism.
In the first six months of the year, the agency approved investment promotion applications for 1,300 projects, worth 38.7 billion dollars. These initiatives are projected to generate 82,000 local jobs and consume 11.4 billion dollars in domestic raw materials annually, accounting for 42 percent of the projects' total raw material use. ■
