Quadrilingual website to guide Phuket investors

PHUKET: A quadrilingual website to guide foreign investors will be launched through the Phuket Provincial website next month, Phuket Governor Chamroen Tipayapongtada told the Phuket Gazette in an exclusive interview this week.

The website will be launched in Thai, English, Chinese and Russian.

“We are pushing hard to establish the Investment Institute in Phuket,” said Governor Chamroen.

Phuket already has a Board of Investment (BOI) to guide investors about matters of private and public investments. However, in the past, investors have often been bogged down due to limited understanding of environmental issues and the investment processes, which hinders the smooth flow of business activity.

“Establishing an institute at Provincial Hall will provide a convenient one-stop solution for investors. The proposed institute will guide them through the entire process of investment from start to finish,” Gov Chamroen said.

The recent boom in development and the island’s infrastructure comes with the full-backing of the central government, explained Gov Chamroen.

“We are becoming an international city. We need to continue to come up with long-term strategies to meet the development needs of the island as it becomes a ‘Smart City’,” he said. “We will soon be welcoming more than 16 million tourists a year to the island, and are also situating ourselves to be the maritime hub for the region.”

Gov Chamroen explained that the variety of investment opportunities being brought to the island was an indicator of investors’ confidence in its future.

“However, they must understand and follow Thai laws. Not fully understanding the legal process can hinder them and hold us back,” he said. “This is why the institute is so important.”

The institute is also expected to expedite the process of investing in the island and provide more transparency, boosting investors confidence.

— Chutharat Plerin