With the aim of fulfilling its obligations to various bilateral or multilateral treaties and agreements, on top of easing the enforcement of regulations, the Ministry of Commerce has rescinded three previous ministerial regulations regarding minimum capital requirements for foreign companies and supplanted them with the recently promulgated Ministerial Regulation Re: Minimum Capital and the Period to Bring or Remit the Minimum Capital to Thailand B.E. 2562 (2019).
The new Ministerial Regulation, which took effect on 28th August 2019, outlines both the latest set of requirements as well as the timeframe mandated by the Thai government for foreign companies and investors to bring minimum capital into Thailand. These requirements are not uniform, and the regulation makes distinctions according to company type and the circumstances surrounding them. The provisions of the regulation are summarized accordingly:
Section 2 clarifies that foreign-owned companies that are not required to obtain a foreign business license must have a minimum capital of THB 2 million which must be fully paid up prior to commencing operations.[1] On the other hand, Section 3 requires foreign-owned companies that are mandated to obtain a foreign business license to have a minimum capital of THB 3 million. However, it also declares that if the company’s estimated three-year operational expenses exceed THB 3 million, their minimum requirement should amount to 25% of its three-year operating expenses.[2]
