For months we have heard increasingly dramatic stories about foreigners buying up Thailand through Thai companies.

Nominee structures are illegal. If Thai shareholders are simply being used as names on a piece of paper for somebody else's benefit, the authorities are perfectly entitled to investigate it.

But now we finally have something much more useful than headlines.

We have numbers.

In September, Thailand's Department of Business Development, working with Department of Lands data, released detailed information on company ownership of land and condominiums.

And the figures deserve a closer look.

According to the data, 36,277 companies with some degree of foreign investment hold 305,838 land titles covering approximately 1.064 million rai.

That sounds enormous.

Until you put it into perspective.

Against Thailand's total land area, it represents roughly 0.33%.

But even that description needs explaining.

The overwhelming majority of this land, approximately 901,597 rai, is held by companies where foreign shareholding is 49% or less.

Only approximately 103,591 rai falls within the group classified as 100% foreign-owned companies. That is roughly 0.03% of Thailand's total land area.

And even land held by a wholly foreign-owned company is not automatically suspicious. Thailand has legal mechanisms under which qualifying foreign businesses can own land for approved activities, including certain BOI-promoted investments.

It is also interesting to see where much of the wholly foreign-owned corporate land is concentrated. Chonburi and Rayong feature prominently.

Hardly surprising.

This is Thailand's industrial Eastern Seaboard and EEC, home to major factories, logistics operations and international investment.

The condominium figures are equally interesting.

The data covers 244,115 condominium units owned by legal entities. Companies with some foreign investment hold 76,840 of those units, or 31.48%.

Again, most of those units sit in companies with foreign participation of 49% or less. Only 1,179 units are reported in the wholly foreign-owned company category.

Does this mean Thailand has no nominee problem?

No.

And this distinction is important.

A company showing Thai majority ownership on paper can still be unlawful if Thai shareholders are merely nominees and the real financing or control sits elsewhere.

That is precisely why the authorities are examining the underlying company records.

But the reverse is equally important: the existence of a foreign shareholder does not automatically make a Thai company a nominee company.

Foreign investment, legal foreign ownership and illegal nominee ownership are three very different things. Unfortunately, they are too often mixed together in the public discussion.

Thailand needs foreign investment. At the same time, Thailand has every right to enforce its property and business laws.

Those two positions are not contradictory.

Investigate genuine nominee structures. Prosecute deliberate abuse where it can be proven.

But legitimate investors should not be frightened by headlines that treat every company with foreign participation as if it were automatically suspicious.

After nearly 30 years living in Thailand and 23 years working in Pattaya real estate, I have seen plenty of market cycles and plenty of scares.

Facts usually help.

And these latest figures finally give us some.

The video above gives a detailed explanation of the newly released numbers. I do not necessarily agree with every conclusion reached by the presenter, but the statistical breakdown is well worth watching and adds useful context to the discussion.

 

KC Cuijpers
CEO, Town & Country Property Co., Ltd.