Three Sectors Hold 68 Percent of Thailand's Dormant Firms 2026
In short
Three industries hold 67.9 percent of Thailand's 993,336 dormant companies, as of 17 July 2026. Wholesale and retail trade alone accounts for 389,996 of them, more than construction and manufacturing combined. Add construction and manufacturing and the three sectors reach 674,405 dormant companies. Those same three sectors make up just 61.9 percent of all 1,986,709 companies with a size band. Dormancy concentrates even harder than the register itself already does.
Is dormancy spread evenly across Thai industries?
Three sectors hold 67.9 percent of Thailand's 993,336 dormant companies, as of 17 July 2026. Wholesale and retail trade carries 389,996 of them on its own, more than construction and manufacturing combined. Add construction's 163,076 and manufacturing's 121,333 and the three sectors reach 674,405 dormant companies. Those same three sectors make up only 61.9 percent of the 1,986,709 companies with a size band. Dormancy concentrates harder than the register itself already does. The eight largest sections by dormant count reach 908,134 companies, a 91.4 percent share of every dormant company nationwide, leaving thirteen smaller sections to split the rest.
Dormant companies by industry section
- Wholesale and retail trade389,996
- Construction163,076
- Manufacturing121,333
- Professional, scientific and technical57,667
- Real estate56,228
- Administrative and support43,677
- Transportation and storage41,113
- Accommodation and food service35,044
Figures in dormant companies.
These eight sections together hold 908,134 of Thailand's 993,336 dormant companies, a 91.4 percent share. Wholesale and retail alone accounts for close to two in five dormant companies nationwide, a 39.3 percent share.
Dormant companies by industry section, ranked
| Industry section | Dormant companies | Share of all dormant | Dormant rate in section |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale and retail trade | 389,996 | 39.3% | 54.5% |
| Construction | 163,076 | 16.4% | 57.5% |
| Manufacturing | 121,333 | 12.2% | 52.7% |
| Professional, scientific and technical | 57,667 | 5.8% | 41.5% |
| Real estate | 56,228 | 5.7% | 37.6% |
| Administrative and support | 43,677 | 4.4% | 43.4% |
| Transportation and storage | 41,113 | 4.1% | 48.2% |
| Accommodation and food service | 35,044 | 3.5% | 41.9% |
| Information and communication | 23,510 | 2.4% | 44.8% |
| Financial and insurance | 14,867 | 1.5% | 41.8% |
| Arts and entertainment | 9,414 | 0.9% | 50.9% |
| Agriculture | 8,530 | 0.9% | 44.3% |
| Other services | 7,813 | 0.8% | 38.2% |
| Education | 5,879 | 0.6% | 42.3% |
| Mining and quarrying | 5,691 | 0.6% | 69.1% |
| Human health and social work | 4,516 | 0.5% | 26.1% |
| Electricity and gas | 3,112 | 0.3% | 39.7% |
| Water and waste | 1,811 | 0.2% | 37.6% |
Dormant company count, share of national dormancy, and the dormant rate within each section, as of 17 Jul 2026. Three sections with fewer than 40 companies each are excluded.
Why this matters
This concentration is not a coincidence of Thailand's business structure. Wholesale and retail, construction and manufacturing are the three fields where starting a company costs the least and where a single lost contract or a closed shop is easiest to walk away from without formally deregistering. The World Bank has flagged the same three fields as where Thai small and medium enterprises cluster most heavily, alongside services (World Bank, 2025). A market sizing exercise that treats every registered wholesale and retail company as a live prospect will overstate the addressable market more in this sector than in almost any other, since better than half of its register sits dormant. Anyone building a customer list, a credit model or a competitor count from raw registration counts should filter for active status first, and filter hardest exactly here.
Definitions
- Dormant company
- A registered company that the Department of Business Development currently flags as inactive rather than active. It remains on the register and is not the same as a dissolved or struck off company.
- Active company
- A registered company that the Department of Business Development currently flags as active.
- Dormancy rate
- The dormant company count in a section divided by the total company count in that section, expressed as a percentage.
- Industry section
- One of the 21 ISIC letter groupings that the DBD registry assigns to every 5 digit TSIC industry code, such as G for wholesale and retail trade or F for construction.
- Share of all dormant companies
- A section's dormant company count divided by the national total of 993,336 dormant companies, expressed as a percentage.
- Company with a size band
- A company that the registry has classified into a size category, micro, small, medium or large, based on filed financial data. This page counts only companies with an assigned size band.
Assumptions
- Dormant status reflects the DBD registry flag at the time of this data pull, not a field audit confirming whether each company still trades in practice.
- The 1,986,709 total used throughout this page covers companies with an assigned size band, which is 99.8 percent of the 1,989,709 companies on the full register.
- Three sections with fewer than 40 companies each, households, public administration and extraterritorial bodies, are left out of the chart and ranked table because their counts are too small to read as a stable rate.
- 5 digit TSIC rows were rolled up to their parent industry section to compute these totals, since 5 digit industry names are not published in this dataset.
Methodology
Dormant here means a company that Thailand's Department of Business Development lists as registered but currently inactive, not necessarily dissolved or struck off. Figures are computed by summing the active and inactive company counts recorded against each 5 digit TSIC industry code in the DBD sourced registry, then rolling those codes up to their parent industry section, as of 17 July 2026. Only the 1,986,709 companies that carry an assigned company size band are included, which is 99.8 percent of the 1,989,709 companies on the full register. Three sections with fewer than 40 companies each, households, public administration and extraterritorial bodies, are excluded from the chart and the ranked table because a handful of firms cannot support a stable rate.
How we verified this
- Summed inactive_count across all 21 TSIC sections equals 993,336, matching the national dormant company total.
- Wholesale and retail, construction and manufacturing dormant counts sum to 389,996 plus 163,076 plus 121,333, which is 674,405, or 67.9 percent of 993,336.
- The same three sectors sum to 716,066 plus 283,564 plus 230,396, which is 1,230,026 of the 1,986,709 companies with a size band, a 61.9 percent share, below their 67.9 percent share of dormancy.
- The eight largest sections by dormant count sum to 908,134, a 91.4 percent share of all dormant companies.
- Section dormancy rates were recomputed as inactive divided by total entities per section: wholesale and retail 54.5 percent, construction 57.5 percent, manufacturing 52.7 percent, each above the national dormancy rate of 993,336 divided by 1,986,709, which is 50.0 percent.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons and company status by industry classification. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- World Bank. (2025). Thailand economic monitor, February 2025: Unleashing growth, innovation, SMEs and startups. World Bank Group. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/thailand/publication/thailand-economic-monitor-february-2025-unleashing-growth-innovation-smes-and-startups
Frequently asked questions
Which three industries hold most of Thailand's dormant companies?
Wholesale and retail trade, construction and manufacturing, together holding 674,405 of the 993,336 dormant companies on the register, a 67.9 percent share.
Is dormancy spread evenly across Thai industries?
No. The same three sectors that dominate the register also dominate dormancy, and their 67.9 percent share of dormant companies runs higher than their 61.9 percent share of all registered companies with a size band.
What counts as a dormant company in this data?
A company that the Department of Business Development lists as registered but currently flags as inactive rather than active, as of 17 July 2026.
Which sector has the highest dormancy rate, even if it is not the largest?
Mining and quarrying, where 69.1 percent of the sector's own companies are dormant, the highest rate of any section shown, though it holds only 0.6 percent of the national dormant total because the sector is small.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). Three Sectors Hold 68 Percent of Thailand's Dormant Firms 2026. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/three-sectors-hold-most-of-thailands-dormant-companies-2026
Data & corrections
Download the data (CSV)Spot something off, or want to ask about the data? Email insights@maxsolutions.co.th. We publish corrections.
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.