Thailand vs Philippines: New Company Formation Pace 2026
In short
Thailand is adding new registered companies faster than the Philippines, by a wide margin. Thailand's Department of Business Development recorded 128,617 new companies in 2025, a pace of 352.4 a day. The Philippine SEC recorded 52,304 new corporations across its own most recently completed full year, 2024, a pace of 142.9 a day. That puts Thailand's daily formation pace at roughly 2.47 times the Philippines'. Adjust for population and Thailand still leads, at nearly four times the Philippines' rate of new companies per million residents. Early 2025 data suggests the Philippine side of the gap is not closing.
Which country is adding companies faster, Thailand or the Philippines?
Thailand wins this one on every measure available. The Department of Business Development logged 128,617 new company registrations across 2025, a pace of 352.4 a day (DBD, 2026). The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission logged 52,304 new corporations in 2024, its own most recently completed full calendar year, a pace of 142.9 a day, up 6 percent from 49,506 in 2023 (BusinessWorld, 2025). Divide one daily rate by the other and Thailand's pace runs 2.47 times the Philippines'. Thailand's economy is smaller than the Philippines' in population terms, roughly 71.7 million people against 115.8 million, yet it still produces more than double the daily flow of new companies in absolute terms.
Daily company formation pace
- Thailand, 2025352
- Philippines, 2024143
Figures in new companies per day.
Thailand adds well over twice as many companies to its register on an average day.
Does the gap survive once population is stripped out?
Yes, and that is the more surprising half of this story. Thailand's population runs to about 71.69 million people. The Philippines carries roughly 115.84 million, well over half again as many residents (World Bank, 2025). A simple headcount would predict the larger country should also produce more new companies per person, since a bigger population usually means a bigger pool of would-be founders. It does not play out that way here. Thailand's daily pace works out to 4.92 new companies a day for every million residents. The Philippines manages 1.23. That leaves Thailand's per-capita formation rate at roughly 3.98 times the Philippines', barely narrower than the raw 2.47 times gap in absolute counts. Population size explains almost none of the difference.
Daily formation pace per million residents
- Thailand, 20255
- Philippines, 20241
Figures in new companies per day per million population.
The larger country by population still trails badly once formation is measured per resident.
Thailand and the Philippines side by side
| Metric | Thailand | Philippines |
|---|---|---|
| New companies, most recent full year | 128,617 (2025) | 52,304 (2024) |
| Daily formation pace | 352.4 | 142.9 |
| Growth over prior full year | 5.72% | 5.65% |
| Population | 71.69 million | 115.84 million |
| Daily pace per million residents | 4.92 | 1.23 |
| Jan to Oct running-year change | not tracked at this cadence | down 5.35% year on year |
New company formation, population and recent trend, Thailand as of 17 Jul 2026, Philippines figures dated to the SEC's own published years.
A caveat on dates and a signal on where the gap is heading
The two headline years do not line up perfectly and a careful reader should know why. Thailand's 128,617 figure covers the full 2025 calendar year, computed from the DBD registry on 17 July 2026. The Philippines' most recently completed full year on record is 2024, so this comparison uses 52,304 rather than a still-incomplete 2025 count. That gap is not just a data-availability quirk. The SEC's own partial 2025 figures point the same direction as the full-year comparison. From January through October 2025 the Philippines registered 43,185 new corporations, down 5.35 percent from the 45,624 recorded over the same ten months of 2024 (Philstar, 2025). Thailand's full 2025 count, by contrast, grew 5.72 percent over its own 2024 total of 121,657. One registry is cooling in the same year the other is accelerating, which suggests the gap documented here is not a snapshot of a single unusual year. It is closer to the current trend line.
Why this matters
Cross-border comparisons of company formation get cited as a proxy for how easy it is to start a business, and raw counts alone would already favor Thailand here. What makes this comparison worth publishing is that the population adjustment does not flip the result the way it does against Singapore, where a much smaller, richer country out-paces Thailand once population is factored in. Against the Philippines, a country with a substantially larger population than Thailand's, Thailand still leads by nearly four times on a per-resident basis. A reader comparing Southeast Asian business registries by headline growth rate alone, 5.72 percent against 5.65 percent, would miss that the underlying bases are wildly different in scale, and would miss entirely that the Philippines' most recent ten months of data are already trending in the opposite direction from Thailand's.
Definitions
- Daily formation pace
- The total count of new companies registered in a calendar year divided by the number of days in that year, expressing formation volume as an average daily rate.
- Founding year
- The calendar year in which a company was registered with Thailand's Department of Business Development, used to group new registrations by year.
- SEC
- The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission, the national regulator that registers corporations and partnerships in the Philippines, equivalent in function to Thailand's Department of Business Development.
- Population-adjusted formation rate
- The daily formation pace divided by a country's population in millions, allowing formation intensity to be compared across countries of very different size.
Assumptions
- Thailand's 2025 founding-year count is treated as complete because 2025 is a fully elapsed calendar year in a registry snapshot computed in mid-2026. 2026 itself is excluded because it is still in progress.
- The Philippines' 52,304 figure for 2024 is its most recently completed full-year total as reported in the business press rather than a live registry query, since the read-only database used for this page holds only Thai registry aggregates.
- Philippine daily pace figures divide by 366 days for 2024 and by the actual number of elapsed days for the January to October 2025 window, so the two countries' day counts are not perfectly identical years but are each internally consistent.
- Population figures for both countries are 2024 World Bank total population estimates, the latest year available for both at the time of writing.
- The January to October 2025 Philippine figures are a partial-year signal on direction, not a substitute for a completed full-year total, and are presented as such.
Methodology
Thailand's figures come from the market_new_companies_insight aggregate in the Department of Business Development registry, filtered to founding_year 2025, computed_at 17 July 2026. The daily pace divides the 128,617 annual total by 365 calendar days. Philippine figures are not drawn from the Thai registry. The 52,304 full-year 2024 count and its 6 percent growth over 49,506 in 2023 come from Securities and Exchange Commission data reported by BusinessWorld in February 2025. The Philippine daily pace divides that count by 366 days, since 2024 was a leap year. The January to October 2025 figures of 43,185 and 45,624 come from SEC data reported by Philstar in November 2025. Population figures for both countries are World Bank total population estimates for 2024, the latest year available for both at the time of writing. 2026 founding-year records are excluded from Thailand's count throughout because the year is still in progress and undercounts registrations not yet filed.
How we verified this
- 128,617 divided by 365 days equals 352.4, the stated Thailand daily formation pace for 2025.
- 52,304 divided by 366 days, since 2024 was a leap year, equals 142.9, the stated Philippines daily formation pace for 2024.
- 352.4 divided by 142.9 equals 2.47, confirming Thailand's daily pace runs about 2.47 times the Philippines'.
- 352.4 divided by a Thailand population of 71.69 million equals 4.92 new companies per day per million residents.
- 142.9 divided by a Philippines population of 115.84 million equals 1.23 new companies per day per million residents.
- Dividing the unrounded per capita rates, about 4.915 for Thailand against about 1.234 for the Philippines, gives 3.98, confirming Thailand's population-adjusted pace runs roughly four times the Philippines'.
- 128,617 versus Thailand's 2024 total of 121,657 gives growth of 5.72 percent, matching the stated figure.
- 52,304 versus the Philippines' 2023 total of 49,506 gives growth of 5.65 percent, matching the stated figure.
- 43,185 versus 45,624 for the Philippines' January to October periods gives a decline of 5.35 percent, matching the stated figure.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons by year of founding. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- BusinessWorld. (2025). Corporate registrations up 6% to 52,304 last year. https://bworldonline.com/corporate/2025/02/05/651127/corporate-registrations-up-6-to-52304-last-year/
- Philstar.com. (2025). Over 43,000 new companies registered with SEC. https://www.philstar.com/business/2025/11/29/2490534/over-43000-new-companies-registered-sec
- World Bank. (2025). Population, total [Data set]. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=PH-TH
Frequently asked questions
Is Thailand or the Philippines registering new companies faster?
Thailand, by a wide margin. Thailand registered 128,617 new companies in 2025, a pace of 352.4 a day, against the Philippines' 52,304 in 2024, a pace of 142.9 a day, a ratio of about 2.47 times.
Does the Philippines catch up once population is taken into account?
No. Thailand's per-capita pace of 4.92 new companies a day per million residents runs almost four times the Philippines' 1.23, even though the Philippines has a much larger population.
Is the gap between the two countries growing or shrinking?
It looks to be growing. Thailand's full-year count grew 5.72 percent from 2024 to 2025, while the Philippines' January to October 2025 registrations fell 5.35 percent from the same period in 2024.
Why compare a 2025 Thai figure with a 2024 Philippine figure?
2024 is the most recently completed full calendar year the Philippine SEC has published a total for. Using it alongside Thailand's completed 2025 figure avoids comparing a full year against a partial one for either country.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). Thailand vs Philippines: New Company Formation Pace 2026. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/thailand-vs-philippines-new-business-registration-pace-2026
Data & corrections
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Written by
Chatpong L.Founder, Max Data, Max Solutions Co., Ltd.
Chatpong L. leads Max Data, a company-intelligence platform built on Thailand's official business registry. He writes about the structure of the Thai economy using primary registry data. His work covers company formation, industry concentration, and regional business activity.
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This page reports company-level and aggregate statistics only. It names no individuals and makes no claims about any person. Figures are provided for information and may be revised as source data updates.