Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing foreign retirees in Thailand and the regulatory structure associated with Thai Immigration. I thought of making this video after reading an article from the Bangkok Post, that's bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Council urges effort to woo foreign retirees. Quoting directly: "The private sector agrees with the Coalition Government's vow to reform outdated laws and regulations, especially in terms of cutting redundant rules that hinder tourism development. The second policy is to suspend around 1,400 laws and regulations that are proving to be impediments to business at present." Impediments to business at present! So again, there seems to be, the title of this article was about wooing retirees; they talk a lot about tourism in there.

Long story short as always, Thailand benefits greatly from foreign nationals coming to Thailand and spending money in a tourism context or a retirement context. The question is, would lightening up the regulatory structure associated with Immigration benefit Thailand in the sense that it might attract more retirees. I'd say it is definitely possible and definitely something to think about. The other thing to bear in mind is Thailand has a very accommodating Retirement Visa system. The ability to come to Thailand and basically not have to really put down a great deal of money but just need to maintain roughly, well not roughly, in the case of the Baht denomination it's clearly 800,000 Baht in a Thai bank account or 65,000 Baht in terms of income. That's not a really a super high threshold especially when you look at other Residence programs throughout the world and other programs, so-called Golden Visas and these things, they are far more expensive than that and you're not spending the 800,000, you are just putting it into a bank account. It is not a matter of that money is gone, it is a matter that that money is just being held in a specific account in order to be on file for purposes of maintaining one's long-term Visa status here in the Kingdom.

So should Thailand do more to woo foreign retirees? Yeah I think so. I mean especially coming off of two and a half years of virtually zero tourism and we did not see a major increase of retirees in the Kingdom, I am sure Thailand  could use the foreign exchange. So yeah, all around it would be a good idea to woo more retirees. That said, major changes especially in the current political climate, major changes to the Thai Immigration rules remain to be seen but we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as the situation evolves.