1 February, 2016
The Office of the Council of State approved the draft ministerial regulation exempting commercial banking and representative offices of foreign banks and life and non-life insurance from the restricted business activities under Schedule 3 of the Foreign Business Act (FBA), after the matter was approved by the Cabinet last year. The exemption will ease some restrictions on banking and insurance sectors and facilitate foreign investment in these sectors in Thailand.
Connected businesses of commercial banking and life and non-life insurance currently are not included in the list of exempted business under this draft ministerial regulation. Therefore, a foreign business license from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) would still be required prior to conducting such business activities.
The MOC will present the draft ministerial regulation to the Cabinet for acknowledgement before the MOC can proceed to issue it as a ministerial regulation. Once the MOC issues a ministerial regulation to this effect, commercial banks and representative offices of foreign banks and life and non-life insurance businesses will no longer require a foreign business license to operate but will still be subject to licensing and foreign shareholding limit requirements from their own specific regulations, in particular the Financial Institution Business Act, Life Insurance Act and Non-Life Insurance Act.
In view of a few remaining steps, the ministerial regulation is expected to be issued shortly.
We will keep you informed when the ministerial regulation is issued by the MOC.
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