How BOI Import Duty Exemptions Cut Your Machinery and Material Costs

Everyone talks about the BOI corporate tax holiday. Fewer people realize that the same certificate can wipe out the import duties on your machinery and your production materials, and for a business that brings a lot in from overseas, that saving often lands sooner and hits harder than the tax break.

If you’re setting up a promoted company that imports equipment or raw inputs, the import duty exemptions are a core reason to bother with BOI promotion at all. They sit inside the wider incentive package (we cover the whole bundle in our BOI incentives overview), but they deserve their own treatment because the rules, the deadlines, and the online systems you use to claim them are specific and easy to get wrong.

This is the full guide to how those duty exemptions work, what qualifies, and how you actually claim them.

The Three Duty Exemptions

BOI import duty relief isn’t one blanket privilege. It’s a set of distinct incentives written into separate sections of the Investment Promotion Act, and each one covers a different kind of import. The Board of Investment lists them like this:

• Machinery (Sections 28 and 29): exemption or reduction of import duty on the machinery you bring in to run the promoted activity. This is the big one for any project that imports equipment.
• Raw and essential materials for production (Section 30): a reduction of import duty on the raw and essential materials you import to make your product. Note the wording. Section 30 is a reduction, not always a full waiver, and it applies to materials used in production generally.
• Materials for export production (Section 36): a full exemption of import duty on raw and essential materials imported to make goods you then export. If you’re producing for overseas markets, this is the one that matters most, and it’s an exemption, not just a reduction.

There’s a fourth, narrower one worth knowing about: Section 30/1 exempts import duty on materials brought in specifically for research and development. If your project has an R&D component, ask about it, because it’s easy to overlook.

Tip: these privileges survive even when the tax holiday doesn’t. A Group B project earns no corporate income tax exemption, but it still keeps the machinery and raw-material duty treatment. So for a lot of trading, service, and lighter-industry activities, the import duty side is the real tax benefit on the table.

The Machinery Exemption and the 30-Month Clock

The machinery exemption under Sections 28 and 29 covers the equipment you import to carry out your promoted activity.

In practice that means production machinery, and depending on the activity, supporting equipment the Board accepts as part of the setup. What it doesn’t cover is anything unrelated to the promoted activity, or machinery you could reasonably source in Thailand where the Board decides local supply is adequate.

The part people trip on is timing. Duty-exempt machinery has to be imported within 30 months of the date your promotion certificate is issued. That clock starts on the certificate date, not the date you start operating, so it can run out faster than you expect if the build-out drags.

If you need longer, you can extend it. The Board allows the machinery importation period to be extended up to three times, one year each, which gives you a practical ceiling of 30 months plus three more years. Extensions aren’t automatic, though. You request them through the eMT system before the window closes, and the Board reviews the reason.

Leave it until after the deadline and you’re negotiating from a much weaker position.

Watch the deadline, not the ribbon-cutting: the 30-month window runs from certificate issuance. If your equipment orders have long lead times, map the delivery schedule against that date the moment the certificate lands, and file for an extension early if the timeline is tight. A late import means full duty on machinery you were entitled to bring in for free.

The Raw-Materials Exemption: Section 30 vs Section 36

Machinery is a one-time event. Raw materials are ongoing, which is why they’re handled differently and why the two sections matter.

• Section 30 gives you a reduction of import duty on raw and essential materials used in production. It’s aimed at inputs where there’s no adequate domestic source, and because it’s a reduction rather than a blanket exemption, the size of the relief depends on the material and the Board’s determination.
• Section 36 is the stronger one, and it’s specifically for export. If you import raw and essential materials to manufacture goods that you then send abroad, Section 36 exempts the import duty on those materials outright. The logic is straightforward: Thailand doesn’t want to tax inputs for products that leave the country and earn export revenue.

Unlike the machinery window, the raw-material privilege isn’t a single 30-month gate. You operate against an approved import period that’s set up for your project, and you renew it as you go. For the Section 36 export privilege, each extension of the importation period can be granted for up to two years at a time, so the mechanism is built for a business that keeps importing inputs year after year.

The exact base period and renewal cadence are set for your project when you register it in the system, which is why getting the initial setup right matters more than memorizing a single number.

How You Actually Claim It: eMT and RMTS

Here’s where theory meets the loading dock. You don’t walk up to Customs waving your certificate. BOI duty privileges are administered through two online systems, both run in partnership with the Investor Club Association (IC), and you register for them after your certificate is issued.

eMT

eMT (electronic Machine Tracking) handles machinery. The flow runs like this:

• Register in the IC user system to get your login.
• Submit a machine master list for approval: every item of machinery you intend to bring in under the exemption.
• When a shipment arrives, file a machinery release request. The system checks it against your approved master list and, because it’s automated, clears it fast (BOI’s own materials describe machinery release approvals processed within about an hour).
• Take the approval to Customs and clear the machinery duty-free.

RMTS

RMTS (Raw Material Tracking System) does the same job for materials, with an extra layer because materials get consumed.

• You register a project code, submit a raw-material list and your production formulas, then request release approvals as shipments come in.
• The system tracks the balance: what you imported duty-free against what you actually used to make and export product.
• Release approvals run through an automated channel (BOI describes these as processed within about three hours), and account-balance adjustments are handled within a few working days.

The production-formula and balance-tracking piece is the part that catches people out. RMTS isn’t just a gate at import; it’s a reconciliation system. It expects the materials you brought in duty-free to show up as inputs in products you actually made and, for Section 36, exported.

Sloppy formulas or a stock balance that doesn’t reconcile is exactly the kind of thing that surfaces later as a duty liability. This is closely tied to your ongoing BOI compliance reporting, and it’s a big reason most promoted companies run these systems with a specialist rather than in-house from day one.

What It’s Actually Worth

Thailand’s import duties vary enormously by product. Some categories carry low single-digit rates; others, especially finished machinery, vehicles, and certain materials, run well into the double digits.

Because the range is so wide, we won’t quote you a headline percentage: the honest answer is that your saving depends entirely on the specific tariff codes for what you import, which you can check against the Thai Customs Department tariff.

But the shape of the saving is easy to see. Take a project importing THB10,000,000 of production machinery. If that equipment would otherwise attract, say, a 10% import duty, the exemption is worth THB1,000,000 on day one, before you’ve earned a single baht of the profit your corporate tax holiday applies to. Here’s the same idea laid out:

Import (illustrative)	Without BOI	With BOI promotion
THB10,000,000 machinery at an example 10% duty	THB1,000,000 duty	THB0
THB5,000,000/year materials for export at an example 8% duty (Section 36)	THB400,000/year duty	THB0
Timing of the saving	Paid at import, before profits	Recovered immediately, every shipment

Remark: The rates above are illustrative placeholders, not real tariffs for any specific product. The point is the timing. A corporate tax exemption only helps once you’re profitable. Import duty relief helps the moment goods cross the border, which for a capital-heavy or import-heavy business is often when cash is tightest. That’s why we tell founders not to treat duty relief as a footnote to the tax holiday. For the right business, it’s the headline.

The Conditions That Bite Later

Duty-free isn’t the same as unconditional. The privilege is tied to your promoted activity, and BOI keeps the right to claw it back if the goods don’t end up doing what you said they would.

Don’t move duty-free machinery on your own: equipment you imported duty-free is meant to stay in the promoted project. Sell it, transfer it, mortgage it, or repurpose it for something else without BOI’s permission, and you can be required to pay the import duty you originally skipped, sometimes with penalties on top. If you genuinely need to dispose of a machine, get BOI sign-off first.

Materials have to reconcile: under Section 36, duty-free materials are exempt because they go into exported products. If your RMTS account shows materials imported duty-free that can’t be matched to production and export, expect BOI to treat the shortfall as dutiable. Keep formulas accurate and stock records clean, because this is checked, not assumed.

None of this is a reason to shy away from the privilege. It’s a reason to run the systems properly. The companies that get burned aren’t the ones using the exemption; they’re the ones who treated it as free money and skipped the record-keeping. Set up eMT and RMTS correctly at the start, file your extensions before the deadlines, and keep your balances honest, and the duty relief does exactly what it’s meant to.

Whether these exemptions are worth real money to you depends on what you import and how much, and that ties directly into your project’s capital plan and how you frame the whole thing in your BOI application.