BOI Adds Thai Employment Ratios and Minimum Salary Floors to Visa and Work Permit Eligibility

Thailand's Board of Investment issued new guidelines on June 5, 2025, adding employment-ratio and minimum-salary criteria to the conditions a BOI-promoted project must meet before it can sponsor visa and work permit privileges for its foreign staff. The rules took effect in two phases: October 1, 2025, for new BOI certificates issued on or after the June 5, 2025 announcement date, and January 1, 2026, for existing BOI projects holding certificates issued before that date. Both phases are now in force.

The Employment Ratio Requirement

For manufacturing companies with more than 100 total employees, at least 70% of total employment must be Thai nationals. This directly ties a company's ability to sponsor foreign staff visas and work permits to its actual hiring composition, rather than treating BOI promotion status alone as sufficient grounds for unlimited foreign staffing. Service-sector entities, including IT and consulting businesses, are exempt from this specific ratio requirement, reflecting a policy distinction between manufacturing operations, where the government wants to see substantial Thai employment alongside foreign technical or management staff, and service businesses, where the underlying economics and staffing patterns differ.

The Minimum Salary Requirement

Independent of the employment ratio, all BOI-promoted companies must now meet minimum monthly salary thresholds for foreign staff, calibrated to seniority: an executive-level foreign employee must earn at least 150,000 baht per month; a manager, engineer, IT specialist, or researcher must earn at least 75,000 baht, reduced to 50,000 baht only for qualifying degree-holders in that same role; and a general operation-level employee must earn at least 50,000 baht, with no degree-based reduction available at that level, for the position to qualify under BOI's visa and work permit privileges. This applies regardless of whether the sponsoring company meets the 70% Thai employment ratio, since the salary floors and the employment ratio are separate, independently enforced conditions.

A Narrow but Real Exemption

Foreign nationals entering Thailand on short-term employment contracts of six months or less are exempt from both the employment-ratio and minimum-salary requirements. This carve-out matters for companies bringing in foreign specialists for short, defined engagements, a factory commissioning specialist, a short-term technical consultant, or similar roles, since it means the new criteria are aimed at long-term foreign staffing patterns rather than every foreign national a BOI-promoted company might bring in for any purpose.

Why This Matters for BOI-Promoted Manufacturers Specifically

A BOI-promoted manufacturing company that has historically relied on a foreign general manager, technical director, or senior engineering staff earning below the new 150,000 baht threshold, or operating with a Thai-to-foreign employment ratio below 70% once total headcount crosses 100 employees, now needs to bring its staffing structure into compliance to keep sponsoring those employees' visas and work permits. For a company that received its BOI certificate before June 5, 2025, this became a live compliance issue as of January 1, 2026, not a future consideration; the retroactive application to existing certificate holders means companies did not get a permanent exemption simply because their promotion predated the new guidelines.

This is a materially different situation from the BOI visa and work permit privileges as many foreign-owned manufacturers understood them when they originally sought BOI promotion. A company that structured its foreign staffing around BOI's traditionally generous visa and work permit terms, without factoring in an eventual Thai employment ratio or salary floor, may now find that renewing or adding foreign staff positions requires either adjusting compensation upward to the new floor, adjusting the overall Thai-to-foreign employment mix, or in some cases restructuring which roles are filled by foreign versus Thai staff.

What Action This Implies

Any BOI-promoted manufacturing company with more than 100 total employees should calculate its current Thai employment percentage now, if it has not already, and identify the gap to 70% if one exists, since this is an active compliance requirement rather than a future planning consideration. Companies employing foreign staff below the 150,000 baht executive-level threshold should review whether affected positions are properly classified, and whether compensation needs adjustment to maintain visa and work permit eligibility for those roles going forward. Companies bringing in foreign specialists for engagements of six months or less should confirm the short-term exemption applies cleanly to the specific arrangement, since misclassifying a longer-term role as short-term risks a work permit application being rejected on eligibility grounds rather than merely delayed.

DeeMED's Visa & Immigration services help BOI-promoted companies assess employment-ratio and salary-floor compliance and structure foreign staff visa and work permit applications to meet the current criteria rather than the more permissive rules that applied before October 2025.