AINEWS
The freeze exposes a fragmented approval system: 16 agencies cleared 35 data centre sites, and 24 of them never appeared in the Board of Investment's register.
Thailand's data-centre policy board ordered a temporary halt on 166 projects at its first meeting on September 4, freezing 49 builds already under construction and 117 more awaiting permission until four subcommittees draft national standards within a month.
The freeze is not a moratorium on new investment. It is an inventory exercise. A cross-agency survey the board received found that 16 separate government bodies have been approving data centres, and only 11 of the 35 sites already operating in Thailand went through the Board of Investment's promotion channel. The other 24 cleared different agencies, mostly via industrial-estate authorities, and never appeared in any single regulator's full view of the industry. That fragmentation, more than the count of new builds, is what the new board is trying to fix.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas, who chaired the board's first meeting, said the goal is to keep drawing capital into the sector while raising the bar on what each project delivers. The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) secretary-general, Danucha Pichayanan, presented the 16-agency inventory that triggered the pause. The Deputy PM's stated approach is that approvals will resume, but under criteria none of the existing 35 sites had to meet as a single package.
The new rules will cover water and electricity use, project location, safety, and requirements for clean energy and technology transfer. The four subcommittees have roughly one month to draft criteria covering economic benefits, infrastructure, locations and the environment. Until that draft lands, no project on the existing 166-project list will move forward. The board is, in effect, using the freeze to build the register it never had.
Bangkok already shows the pressure points. Governor Chadchart Sittipunt told the meeting that six data-centre applications have been filed in the capital, each requiring between 9 and 23 megawatts. Three of those sites were approved and have been operating since between 2022 and 2024; the other three are on hold pending the new national rules. The city will run spot checks on noise, heat and safety at existing sites, a step that signals where the friction is heading once the new criteria are in place. At the upper end, 23 MW sits in the load class of a mid-sized factory, large enough to push substation planning in a dense district.
The pause also lays down a value-capture test. Ekniti's stated requirement is that projects should generate jobs, local income and technology transfer, not just provide rack space for foreign servers. That requirement, more than any zoning or power-grid rule, is the line the four subcommittees will have to write criteria against. The risk for the government is that the test gets written so loosely that no project fails it; the risk for investors is that the test gets written so tightly that only the largest, most integrated operators can meet it.
For investors, the practical read is that the industrial-estate approval channel, which handled 24 of the 35 operating sites, is the one most exposed to retroactive review. The BOI path remains the safer route because it is the register the new board is rebuilding from. The four-subcommittee, one-month window also sets a concrete next milestone: if the draft criteria are not published within roughly 30 days, the freeze starts to read as a moratorium in practice, regardless of the board's stated intent.
The policy board is scheduled to resume approvals once the four subcommittees report back. The first test will be whether the new criteria force any of the 24 industrial-estate-channel sites to reapply, and whether Bangkok's three on-hold applications, each at 9 to 23 MW, can clear the new bar. The board meets again once those drafts land.