Top 10 Industry Codes Drive 24% of Thai Firm Growth, 2015-2025
In short
Ten industry codes out of roughly 1,032 active codes account for 24 percent of Thailand's gross company additions between 2015 and 2025, as of 14 August 2026. Those ten codes added 63,751 companies combined, out of 265,143 added across the whole register. Restaurants lead alone with 10,047 additions, gaining in every single year of the decade. Real estate trading and brokerage supplies three of the other nine codes. The remaining 1,022 codes split the other 76 percent among them.
How concentrated is Thailand's company growth since 2015?
Ten industry codes explain 24 percent of every filer Thailand's business register gained between 2015 and 2025 (DBD, 2026). The comparison runs across 1,032 five digit TSIC codes with usable year over year data across that decade, and the gross gain summed across all of them comes to 265,143. Restaurants, TSIC code 56101, contribute more filers than any other single code, adding 10,047 over the ten years. Real estate supplies three of the remaining nine codes: buying and selling residential buildings, buying and selling non residential buildings, and fee based real estate brokerage. Construction and professional services each place two codes on the list, and retail trade places two more. Ten codes out of roughly a thousand carry a quarter of the entire decade's growth.
Ten codes against everyone else
- Top 10 industry codes24.0%24
- Other 1,022 codes76.0%76
Ten codes carry about a quarter of the decade's growth. More than a thousand others split the remaining three quarters.
The ten codes that make up that quarter
- Restaurants, 5610110,047
- Buy and sell non-residential buildings, 681026,899
- Retail sale of jewellery, 477326,631
- Construction of residential buildings, 410016,445
- Buy and sell residential buildings, 681016,096
- Retail sale via internet, 479125,885
- Other management consultancy, 702095,720
- Accounting and tax consultancy, 692005,465
- Real estate agents and brokers, 682015,444
- Construction of non-residential buildings, 410025,119
Figures in gross companies added, 2015 to 2025.
Restaurants alone equals 15.8 percent of the top ten's own combined total.
The ten codes ranked by gross additions
| TSIC code | Description | Section | 2015 filers | 2025 filers | Gross additions | Share of total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 56101 | Restaurants | I, Accommodation and food service | 8,424 | 18,471 | 10,047 | 3.79% |
| 68102 | Buying and selling of non-residential buildings, own account | L, Real estate | 16,234 | 23,133 | 6,899 | 2.60% |
| 47732 | Retail sale of jewellery in specialized stores | G, Wholesale and retail trade | 2,117 | 8,523 | 6,631 | 2.50% |
| 41001 | Construction of residential buildings | F, Construction | 6,394 | 12,021 | 6,445 | 2.43% |
| 68101 | Buying and selling of residential buildings, own account | L, Real estate | 6,690 | 12,782 | 6,096 | 2.30% |
| 47912 | Retail sale via internet | G, Wholesale and retail trade | 642 | 6,527 | 5,885 | 2.22% |
| 70209 | Other management consultancy activities | M, Professional, scientific and technical | 8,301 | 13,965 | 5,720 | 2.16% |
| 69200 | Accounting, bookkeeping, auditing and tax consultancy | M, Professional, scientific and technical | 5,669 | 11,134 | 5,465 | 2.06% |
| 68201 | Real estate agents and brokers, fee or contract basis | L, Real estate | 2,238 | 7,654 | 5,444 | 2.05% |
| 41002 | Construction of non-residential buildings | F, Construction | 32,416 | 35,299 | 5,119 | 1.93% |
Filing company counts by five digit TSIC code, statement year 2558 versus 2568, as of 14 Aug 2026.
Why this matters
A quarter of a decade's company growth sitting inside ten codes out of roughly a thousand is a sharp concentration for an economy this size. It also reframes a common assumption. Thailand's business register did not expand broadly across hundreds of trades in equal measure, it expanded heavily around eating out, trading and brokering property, building homes, and a short list of professional services. The gross measure used here counts every year a code gained filers, even when that same code lost filers in another year. Construction of non residential buildings, TSIC code 41002, shows the gap plainly. Its gross additions of 5,119 sit well above its plain net change of 2,883 filers between 2015 and 2025, because the code lost ground in some years along the way. Restaurants show no such gap. Its gross figure and its net change are identical at 10,047, because filer counts rose every single year of the decade without exception. Nationwide, new business registration kept growing into 2026, even as the capital behind those new firms shrank, Nation Thailand reported using NESDC figures. A register that keeps adding companies while concentrating that growth in a narrow set of activities is not the same story as broad based economic diversification. For anyone using Thailand's company count as a proxy for economic breadth, ten codes just did a quarter of the work.
Definitions
- TSIC code
- Thailand Standard Industrial Classification code, a five digit number the DBD assigns to a registered company's main business activity, based on the international ISIC system.
- Gross addition
- The sum, for one industry code, of every year over year rise in filing companies across the decade studied, counted even if the same code lost filers in a separate year.
- Net change
- The plain difference between a code's filing count in the final year of a period and its filing count in the first year, without regard to what happened in between.
- Filing company
- A company that submitted a financial statement to the DBD for a given statement year. Not every registered company files every year.
- Statement year
- The Buddhist calendar year the DBD registry uses to timestamp a filed financial statement. Buddhist year 2568 corresponds to Gregorian year 2025.
- Active industry code, in this study
- A five digit TSIC code with at least one pair of consecutive statement years present in the data between 2015 and 2025, which is how this page counts the roughly 1,032 codes used as the denominator. It is not a count of companies still operating under that code today.
Assumptions
- Active industry code here means a TSIC code with at least one usable pair of consecutive statement years in the 2015 to 2025 window, not a measure of how many companies remain operating today.
- The final year over year step, into statement year 2568, may understate 2025's true contribution, since some companies file their statements months after the fiscal year ends and later filings can still arrive in a future database refresh.
- Gross additions can exceed a plain net change from 2015 to 2025 for any code that lost filers in an intervening year, which is why the 265,143 total here is larger than the 234,733 net change measured across the 938 codes with data present in both endpoint years alone.
- Five digit TSIC codes are not named in the source data, so code identities were matched against Thailand's published TSIC 2009 classification list rather than read directly from the database.
Methodology
Gross company additions were computed from filing company counts by five digit TSIC industry code, drawn from the DBD registry through Max Data's read only aggregate tables, refreshed as of 14 August 2026. For each industry code, the filing count from every statement year between Buddhist year 2558, calendar 2015, and Buddhist year 2568, calendar 2025, was compared with the count the year before it. Only the years where the count rose were kept, and those rises were summed for each code across the whole decade. That sum is called a gross addition because it can exceed a code's plain net change from 2015 to 2025 if the code also lost filers in an intervening year. The ten codes with the largest gross addition were then measured as a share of the gross addition summed across all 1,032 industry codes with at least one usable year over year comparison in the window. Codes are five digit TSIC classifications and are not named in the source table, so descriptions were matched against Thailand's published TSIC 2009 classification list.
How we verified this
- Summed positive year over year changes in company_count for all 1,032 TSIC codes with at least one valid year over year step between statement year 2558 and 2568, giving a grand total of 265,143.
- Added the ten largest per code positive sums directly: 10047 plus 6899 plus 6631 plus 6445 plus 6096 plus 5885 plus 5720 plus 5465 plus 5444 plus 5119, equal to 63,751.
- Divided 63,751 by 265,143 to get a share of 24.04 percent, rounded to 24 percent in the text.
- Cross checked TSIC 56101 by hand: its filing count rose in every one of the ten yearly steps from 2558 to 2568, so its positive sum of 10,047 equals its plain endpoint difference of 18,471 minus 8,424.
- Cross checked TSIC 41002 by hand: its positive sum of 5,119 exceeds its plain endpoint difference of 35,299 minus 32,416, which is 2,883, confirming it lost filers in at least one intervening year.
- Confirmed 993 of the 1,032 codes recorded at least one year of growth somewhere in the decade, leaving 39 codes that never gained a single filer year over year.
- Separately summed company_count for the 938 codes with data present in both statement year 2558 and 2568 only, getting a net change of 234,733, smaller than the 265,143 gross figure because gross counts every up year even where a down year followed.
References
- Department of Business Development. (2026). Registered juristic persons and financial statement aggregates by TSIC code. Ministry of Commerce, Thailand. https://www.dbd.go.th/
- Nation Thailand. (2026). Thai businesses turn cautious as new registered capital falls. Nation Thailand, citing National Economic and Social Development Council data. https://www.nationthailand.com/business/economy/40070155
Frequently asked questions
How much of Thailand's company growth since 2015 sits in just ten industry codes?
Ten of Thailand's roughly 1,032 active five digit TSIC codes account for 24 percent of the 265,143 gross filer additions summed across the whole register between 2015 and 2025.
Which single industry code added the most companies?
Restaurants, TSIC code 56101, added more filers than any other code, gaining 10,047 companies and rising in every one of the ten years measured.
Why call this a gross addition instead of net growth?
Because it counts every year an industry code gained filers, even if that same code lost filers in a different year. Construction of non residential buildings gained 5,119 filers this way, well above its plain net change of 2,883 companies from 2015 to 2025.
Cite this page
Chatpong L. (2026). Top 10 Industry Codes Drive 24% of Thai Firm Growth, 2015-2025. Max Data Insights. https://maxdatathailand.com/insights/top-10-industry-codes-share-of-thailands-net-new-companies-2015-2025
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.