Page 93 - _21-0619 OK

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

The Value of Land in Thailand Today

Francis Cripps

Abstract

This article reconstructs the history of private ownership of land in
Thailand from 1960 to the present focusing on value and usage by different
household groups. As direct statistics for land value are not available, the data
have to be estimated from available evidence with some assumptions, and
hence the results are speculative. Of the total land area of about 320 million rai,
land under registered to private owners expanded from 23.4 to 128.6 million
rai while 60% of land remains under government ownership by default.
The total value of private land has increased from around 200 billion Baht
in 1960 to over 30 trillion Baht in 2018. Some 12 million households own a
house and/or small business property, accounting for 5% of the area of
private land and 16% of the total value. Around 2.6 million smallholder
farmers own 68% by area and 42% by value. Some 0.2 million landowners
own 27% of private land by area and 42% by value. The majority of households,
around 60% of the total, have little or no land of their own.

Keywords: land value, land usage, land distribution, land titling, Thailand.

Introduction

In view of the lack of publicly available evidence on the value and
distribution of land ownership in Thailand, this paper seeks to assess the
monetary value of private land, the scale of largely untaxed gains that the upper
tier of society has secured and continues to secure from appreciation of rents
and land prices, and the shares of land owned by various groups including
farmers and non-farm middle-income earners.

It is hardly surprising that sustained economic growth brings increased
inequality as families with power and wealth secure the largest benefits. But this
observation does not tell us much about the people who gained or how and where
they built up their fortunes. To get a picture of the chain of events that has

85
Francis Cripps

5/1/2565 BE 09:03
_21-0619(085-112)6.indd 85
_21-0619(085-112)6.indd 85 5/1/2565 BE 09:03