Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Regional Office set up here in Thailand. First of all what are we kind of talking about? In a sense, this is kind of an atypical, it is not an overly common business entity. A lot of SMEs and things get started over here. Those are standard small companies, those are just small companies, small businesses set up here in Thailand, akin to a C-Corp in the United States for example, not exactly like an LLC although I know a lot of people think that way. It is more like an incorporated entity, like I said a C-Corporation. 

Years ago, Thailand instituted some laws that created things like for example the topic of this video, Regional Offices. Regional Offices, the legislation, the laws regarding them have kind of been in a state of flux for the past few years but recent Ministerial Regulations have been handed down by the Ministry of Commerce which essentially resulted in the fact that Regional Offices generally do not need Foreign Business Licensure like they once did. So they are not operating under the Foreign Business Act and requiring a license as was once the case. Now there are some serious pros and cons to this. The first thing one must understand is one of these Regional Offices is not like just a standard company that can do anything. There is sort of allowed scope of business that can be done so things like consulting and presumably this is an operation which has for lack of a better term, tentacles, it has business interests elsewhere. There are other incorporated entities affiliated with this kind of operation that are operating outside of Thailand, elsewhere. So when we say things like consulting, well the regional office is consulting one of its other offices or its other office if it only has one other one. They can act as a sort of an oversight mechanism for different branches of companies; they can do things like Personnel training; they can do things like research, like R & D on products; they can coordinate things. In a sense, they are almost like an administrative coordinator for a multinational operation in a sense. One of the big things they cannot do is they can't make any money; they can't make any income in Thailand; they can't really do purchase orders, they can't really buy anything; they can't really enter into any kind of business arrangements. In a sense they are very constricted. They have real benefits for different types of operations and a major benefit is now they don't need a Foreign Business License which that could be a major roadblock to folks that wanted to try and set up one of these Regional Offices. Another requirement though which again we are not talking about an SME operation, this is very much multinational type of stuff, but there is a requirement that a 5 million Baht investment need be made and 2 million of it has to be put in within the first year, a million has to be put in within six months and then a million has to be transferred yearly thereafter until you hit the 5 million mark. 

So Regional operating offices, these Regional Offices can be useful to probably a relatively narrow subset of multinationals that may want to have a presence here in Thailand and they can have some benefits. But, it is definitely not an SME kind of thing and I have had people that are kind of in an SME posture that have asked me about these kind of entities, these sorts of setups and quite frankly it doesn't really pertain to them. This is more for a multinational type of operation that is looking to have a presence here in the Kingdom.