The Democrat Party proposes that the parliament establish a special committee to study whether setting up "Data Centers" in Thailand is worthwhile, following a surge of foreign investment requests. There are concerns that the drawbacks could outweigh the benefits since Thailand currently lacks control measures, including tax regulations.
At 4:30 p.m. on 8 July 2026 at the parliament, Karn Jatikavanich, party-list MP and deputy leader of the Democrat Party, announced that the party had gathered MPs' signatures to urgently submit a motion requesting the parliament to set up a special committee to assess the cost-effectiveness of investments in Data Center projects. These are buildings housing servers and networking equipment that store, process, and distribute vast amounts of digital data, acting as the brain or heart of internet applications and cloud systems. Currently, there is a global trend of investing in Data Centers, and Thailand is no exception, with foreign investors seeking to build Data Centers here and requesting investment privileges from the BOI for projects valued at about 1.7 trillion baht. Despite this enormous value, the Thai public should recognize that Data Center investments require large amounts of water and electricity, leading some countries to ban or temporarily halt such projects.
Karn added that to carefully consider the cost-benefit and potential impacts, Data Center investments are targeting Thailand because the country welcomes them without conditions or evaluation criteria for benefits and consequences. Thailand lacks control measures and even tax policies, opening the door to one-sided investment benefits. The Thai government should assess whether foreign investments totaling 1.7 trillion baht, mostly given tax privileges and special conditions, yield meaningful returns for Thailand, especially in terms of employment or personnel compared to other industries, or access rights to the data stored in these Data Centers. The Democrat Party is very concerned and believes that if Thailand allows Data Center construction, negotiations should include conditions ensuring the Thai government, country, or local operators receive benefits from data access. Therefore, the party has submitted an urgent motion to debate and establish a special committee to study this issue before pushing forward with Data Center construction in Thailand. Although this may not happen in the current parliamentary session, we will act as quickly as possible when the next session opens.