Thailand needs to set up a central authority to oversee data centres to ensure investments in the sector create jobs and support economic growth, the National Economic and Social Development Council said on Monday.
A central agency should be established to oversee data centres and their environmental impact, the NESDC said.
Laws and regulations should also be updated to align with the specific characteristics of data centres, the NESDC said.
Data centre investment should allow more participation from Thai businesses, requiring the use of local content, services and labour, it said.
The government should also open up data centre project planning to public participation, with mechanisms to monitor the impact and provide remedies for affected stakeholders, the NESDC said.
Thailand should promote the efficient use of energy and resources, encouraging operators to increase the share of renewable energy, adopt technologies that reduce electricity and water consumption, and set clear targets for energy and water use, NESDC secretary-general Danucha Pichayanan said at a briefing.
There has been a wave of data centre investments in Thailand in recent years.
In 2025, Thailand's Board of Investment (BOI) approved data centre projects worth more than US$3 billion, including investments by Dubai's DAMAC Digital and Stratus Technology, an affiliate of China's ZDATA Technologies.
In 2024, Google, a unit of Alphabet, announced a $1 billion investment to build a data centre and cloud region in Thailand to meet growing cloud demand and support the adoption of artificial intelligence in Southeast Asia.
Google said in 2024 it would invest $2 billion to develop its first data centre and Google Cloud region in Malaysia.
Recently, the tech giant stated that Thailand must strike a balance between tightening scrutiny of data centres and maintaining the country's competitiveness for global artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investment, as rigid rules or prolonged regulatory uncertainty could push capital flows towards rival markets.
