The Department of Land Transport (DLT) on Tuesday played down media reports of Chinese companies increasingly dominating the domestic transport sector through takeovers of struggling Thai transport businesses, saying licences granted to one business could not be transferred to another even in a takeover.
"More importantly, only Thai legal entities registered and headquartered in Thailand are eligible to hold the licences," the department's statement continued.
The department said that at least 51% of a business's shareholders must be Thai for it to operate legally.
Next week, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Finance will discuss concerns that Thai citizens are being paid to hold shares to skirt this rule.
They would work together to find better measures to regulate these foreign companies in disguise and ensure they cannot gain any advantages over local Thai business operators, said the DLT release.
As for the many Chinese lorries now seen operating in Thailand, the department said vehicles from any country are currently allowed to be used in Thailand as long as they are legally imported and meet the other related requirements in case they are to be used in the transport sector.
At present, over 8,400 vehicles produced in China are registered for use in the transport sector in Thailand, many of which were assembled by a Chinese car maker with a production base in Thailand, said the department.
Aside from all the Thai laws, the DLT said it is also committed to following the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by the six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), including Thailand, in 2016 on the Early Harvest Implementation of the Cross-Border Transport Facilitation Agreement (CBTA), which has been extended to Dec 31, 2026.
The department also said this agreement benefits Thai transport operators.
Up until now, 11 Thai companies have applied for a licence to operate a total of 458 trucks under this regional agreement, and they now expect to begin operating on Sept 1.
On Saturday, a source in the private passenger transport sector said many Chinese companies were negotiating to take over more Thai passenger transport businesses.
Now that about half of the Thai operators have gone out of business, these Chinese operators are eager to enter a market where they see introducing more electric vehicles as just one of a raft of measures that would return the sector to profitability, said the source.