Business registrations continued to increase in March, boosted by the government's tourism promotion scheme and greater investment in the government's flagship Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).
Poonpong Naiyanapakorn, deputy director-general of the Business Development Department, said new business registrations rose by 2% year-on-year in March to 6,876.
The top three sectors for new business registration in March were building and construction (604), property (359) and restaurants (185), driven by higher investment and urbanisation.
The value of registered capital dropped 29.4% from March last year to 17.8 billion baht.
Bangkok accounted for 32% of the new business registrations, with the capital's surrounding provinces seeing 16.8%, secondary provinces 41% and the EEC 10%.
"New business registration was largely driven by the government's policy to promote investment in the EEC, such as infrastructure projects including the high-speed rail route linking three key airports and the expansion of Map Ta Phut and Laem Chabang deep-sea ports," Mr Poonpong said. "The government's ongoing efforts to promote tourism in the 55 second-tier provinces also gave a boost to new registrations."
For the first quarter this year, the number of new business registrations topped 20,750, up 3% from 20,049 in the same period last year.
Registration value for the period was 52.4 billion baht, down 14% from the same quarter of last year.
Mr Poonpong said Chinese investments topped foreign investments in Thai juristic persons in the first quarter, making up 1.99 billion baht, followed by Taiwan (406 million baht) and Japan (397 million baht).
Firms with the highest foreign investment were brokerages and agents, as well as those in property and machine manufacturing.