Thailand’s domestic corporate bond issuance is expected to top 900 billion baht ($27 billion) in 2027, up from an estimated 800 billion baht in 2026, Ariya Tiranaprakij, managing director of the Thai Bond Market Association, told Bloomberg. Companies are tapping the debt market to fund power plants and data centers after four years of decline, the association’s head said.
Set that next to the investment pipeline. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, digital projects, mostly data centers and cloud services, applied for Board of Investment promotion worth 873,741 million baht. That is about 109% of the whole of 2026’s estimated bond issuance, by our arithmetic, though the two are different measures.
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The key insight: The Thai Bond Market Association’s managing director expects domestic corporate bond issuance to top 900 billion baht in 2027, up from an estimated 800 billion baht in 2026, Bloomberg reported. Digital projects applied for 873,741 million baht of Board of Investment promotion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, about 109% of the 2026 estimate by our arithmetic.
The forecast would mark the first increase since 2022, when issuance hit a record 1.26 trillion baht, Bloomberg reported. The years of decline are 2023 to 2026.
A 900-billion-baht year is 360 billion baht, or 28.6%, below that record, and 100 billion baht, or 12.5%, above the 2026 estimate, by our arithmetic. The association’s figure is a floor: issuance is expected to top 900 billion baht.
Billion baht. Bond issuance figures from the Thai Bond Market Association’s managing director as reported by Bloomberg (2022 record, 2026 estimate, 2027 forecast to top 900 billion); digital investment applications from the Board of Investment’s Q1 2026 release. Different measures: applications are the value of projects seeking incentives, not money raised.
Where the Data Centre Money Shows Up
The Board of Investment’s first-quarter release counted 624 projects with combined investment value of 1,016,962 million baht, about 2.4 times the same period a year earlier. Digital took 873,741 million baht across 48 projects, 85.9% of the total by our arithmetic, “mostly in data centers and cloud services”.
The investors it named were TikTok System, Global Switch, Skyline Data Center & Cloud Services and Evolution Data Center, from Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom and Malaysia. In 2025, the board said, it received 36 data center projects with combined investment value exceeding THB 728 billion.
Board of Investment figures are the value of projects applying for incentives, not money raised or spent. Set against bond issuance, they show scale, not how the projects are funded.
The build has had friction. Thailand paused construction on about 49 data centre projects in September while agencies drafted new criteria, Nation Thailand reported, as our piece on south-east Asia’s data centre pipeline noted.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the forecast puts a local-currency bond market behind part of the data center pipeline: the association’s head named power plants and data centers as the uses, and digital took 85.9% of Thailand’s first-quarter investment applications, by our arithmetic.
Bloomberg, on the Thai Bond Market Association’s outlook
“companies tap the debt market to fund investments in power plants and data centers”
Three Implications
FOR THAI ISSUERS The association’s managing director expects issuance to top 900 billion baht in 2027, the first increase since the 1.26 trillion baht record in 2022, Bloomberg reported.
FOR DATA CENTER BUILDERS The Board of Investment named TikTok System, Global Switch, Skyline Data Center & Cloud Services and Evolution Data Center among first-quarter digital applicants.
FOR THE COMPARISON A 900-billion-baht year is 360 billion baht, or 28.6%, below the 2022 record, by our arithmetic.
The framework puts energy and physical infrastructure at the bottom of its nine-layer stack: “The bedrock everything else stands on”.
As we read it, the two uses the association’s head named, power plants and data centers, both sit in that bottom layer, here financed through a local bond market. The framework predates the report and does not discuss it.
What Is Not Established
We read the first three paragraphs of Bloomberg’s report; the rest was behind its paywall. In that text, the association does not split the 2027 issuance between data centers and power plants or name expected borrowers. The 2026 figure is an estimate and the 2027 figure a forecast.
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The Thai Bond Market Association’s managing director expects corporate bond sales to top 900 billion baht in 2027, Bloomberg reported, the first rise since 2022. Digital projects applied for 873,741 million baht of Board of Investment promotion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, about 109% of this year’s estimated issuance by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. The bond issuance forecast, the 2026 estimate and the 2022 record are from Bloomberg’s report quoting the Thai Bond Market Association’s managing director; we read its first three paragraphs and its post on X, not the rest of the article. Investment application figures are from the Thailand Board of Investment’s own releases. The 109% comparison, the 85.9% digital share and the gaps to the 2022 record and the 2026 estimate are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
