Regulatory Reform in Thailand

Since the introduction of Thailand’s Constitution in 2017, the Thai administration has undertaken several initiatives to improve the country’s regulatory landscape through good regulatory practices (GRPs). The 2019 Act on Legislative Drafting and Evaluation of Law further promoted GRPs by outlining specific requirements to support GRPs, including naming Office of the Council of State (OCS) as the country’s main regulatory oversight body (ROB).

In 2020 the OECD conducted a diagnostic scan of Thailand’s regulatory management and oversight reforms. This initial report was conducted in the wake of the reforms to better assess whether they were appropriate under Thailand’s legislative framework and in line with OECD best practice. The report provided several short- and medium-term recommendations to strengthen the reforms that Thailand had undertaken. Since then, there have been several key developments:

• Since August 2020, the Parliament has had a committee on public consultation and regulatory impact assessment to review summaries of public consultation and RIA reports for these legislative proposals.

• In August 2021, Thailand introduced the Central Law Portal, which centralises all communications to stakeholders related to government developments across the administration.

• In October 2023 the RIA requirement was extended to include most subordinate regulations that affect people and businesses.

• Since Thailand introduced a requirement for ex post review in the 2019 Act over 200 such reviews have been conducted, with many resulting in proposed improvements to the legislation. Thailand has also undertaken unique initiatives to eliminate redundant legislation.

Generally, Thailand has made encouraging progress in implementing its reforms. This report identifies remaining gaps in Thailand’s regulatory framework and in the practical application of its reforms and provides recommendations for further improvement. It assesses Thailand’s regulatory management and oversight and provides practical recommendations to improve key elements of Thailand’s regulatory framework, focusing on: overall governance, ex ante regulatory impact assessment (RIA), stakeholder engagement, ex post review, and regulatory enforcement.

Since passing the 2019 Act, Thailand has advanced RIA throughout the administration. The OECD found that there was high awareness across the administration of RIA, its procedures, and its purpose. Generally, RIA practitioners were enthusiastic about RIA and understood the benefits of evidenced-informed policy. They were well trained on the high-level aspects of RIA although they could benefit from more guidance on evidentiary standards and process-specific manuals. Overall, increased and optimised analytical capacity along with an earlier start to the RIA process would allow the Thai public service to present decision makers with better analysis of a variety of regulatory and non-regulatory solutions to a given policy issue.

The Thai administration appears to have a culture of engagement and frequently conducts public hearings on potential laws and regulations. This has been reinforced by the introduction of the Central Law Portal, which appears to elicit significant engagement from business and citizens. RIA practitioners have said that they frequently benefit from public input into draft laws and regulations. Despite the relative openness of the Thai administration to engagement, it could benefit from earlier and broader engagement along with increased transparency on the impact of public opinion on policy decisions.

Thailand has undertaken a comprehensive approach to ex post evaluation of existing laws. Through mandatory reviews under the 2019 Act, the administration has identified many laws that could be amended to ensure they are fit for purpose or otherwise repealed. This is a sign that such reviews are fruitful and taken seriously within the administration. Thailand has also undertaken several ad hoc reviews of laws and regulations to eliminate unnecessary or redundant legislation that falls outside of the purview of Chapter 5 of the 2019 Act. Thailand could improve the efficiency of ex post reviews by ensuring its analytical resources are focused on the highest-impact laws. It could also benefit from stronger linkage between ex ante RIA and ex post review by defining concrete objectives against which the outcomes of a policy can be measured.

Overall, Thailand has made impressive progress toward its better regulation objectives over the past four years. The administration’s continuous efforts to improve its RIA and stakeholder engagement frameworks are encouraging. As such, the OECD has made several recommendations to bring the Thai frameworks more in line with international best practice.

• Continue to promote evidence-informed decision making through mainstreaming the RIA process and promoting stakeholder awareness and engagement.

• Consider enhancing oversight and accountability by publishing annual reports, including statistics, where feasible. on the quality of the RIA and stakeholder engagement. The administration could also consider establishing a Better Regulation Action Plan with clear targets to improve these indicators.

• Promote good practice and learning from agencies who are clear leaders in the RIA process.

• Further clarify the role of the OCS in its oversight capacity and consider giving it the ability to request further study and evidence from ministries whose proposals do not meet the appropriate evidentiary standards.

• Build analytical capacity across the administration by establishing Better Regulation Units with economists, data scientists, and policy experts with expertise in evidence-informed decision making.

• Continue to develop and promote guidance on the RIA process and stakeholder consultation and consider establishing evidentiary standards.

• Undertake RIA earlier in the policy process and revise guidelines to require practitioners to account for the baseline (“do-nothing”) scenario, propose and analyse multiple policy options, as well as set measurable targets for policy outcomes.

• Implement a forward legislative planning process and proportionality framework to better allocate scarce resources and ensure the thorough study of high-impact policy issues and regulatory proposals.

• Require ministerial sign off on RIA summaries to ensure that both the bureaucracy and elected officials are accountable to the public, and that the policy-making process is transparent and legitimate.

• Clarify when stakeholder consultations should occur and encourage consultation early on to help assess whether there is a problem and define the problem rather than once a legislative proposal is already being developed.

• Expand the minimum consultation period of 15 days to the OECD best practice of 30 to 60 days.

• Leverage the Central Law Portal to better facilitate a two-way relationship between the Thai administration and the public, including publishing draft RIA for stakeholder review and comment and considering requiring ministries to respond to stakeholder comments publicly.

• Take a proportional approach to the five-year, ex post reviews mandated by the 2019 Act to better allocate resources to high impact regulations.

• Explicitly require ex post review in high impact regulation to ensure comprehensive reviews are adequately funded when the review period arrives.

• Develop an overarching, whole-of-government policy on regulatory delivery, incorporating risk-based approaches to regulatory enforcement, better targeting, and co-ordination of inspections, and promoting compliance, in line with the OECD Best Practice Principles.