The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society held a press conference to affirm that the 1.6-billion-baht TH-AI Passport project is transparent and denies allegations of favoring the blue political faction, emphasizing adherence to an 80% technical evaluation criterion.
On 29 May 2026, Mr. Patchara Anuntasilp, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society, detailed the timeline to confirm transparency, stating that the project is a policy of Minister Chaiyachon Chidchob and a key strategy to build a large Thai language database (LLM) to drive the country's AI system. The timeline began with the National Digital Economy and Society Committee (NDEC) approving the project on 12 Nov 2025, followed by a public hearing in Dec 2025, and the bidding announcement from 24 Dec 2025 to 26 Jan 2026. He confirmed that all steps strictly complied with the regulations of the Comptroller General’s Department.
The winning bidder was the "TH Consortium," a partnership between Human Intelligent Co., Ltd. and Turnkey Communication Service Public Company Limited, offering a price of 1.621 billion baht—29 million baht below the median price. The official winner was announced after the appeal period ended on 11 March 2026. Regarding rumors that the winning company is closely connected to the blue political party, the Permanent Secretary denied knowledge of this, stating, "The ministry based its decision primarily on the terms of reference (TOR) conditions."
Mr. Vetangk Pongsap, Secretary-General of the NDEC, added that the winner selection criteria used a Price and Performance model, with technical scores weighted as high as 80% and price scores only 20%, due to the complexity of the system work. Therefore, the winner had to be a group proposing a high-performance AI model with experience in projects worth over a billion baht.
The first phase of the "TH-AI Passport" project is scheduled for official launch in June 2026, granting 5 million citizens free access to premium global AI models (such as Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) for 12 months. The government negotiated a special price of just 27.5 baht per month, down from the usual 600 baht. Furthermore, the Ministry plans to proceed immediately with phase two in July 2026, preparing a 900 million baht budget for 2027 to support an additional 5 million users, aiming to boost Thailand's AI adoption rate to 20% by 2027, thereby reducing technological inequality in Thai society.