Thailand’s budget bill for 2027 has prompted calls for reform of the bureaucracy, with experts warning the bloated civil service is hampering the country’s long-term competitiveness.
Of the 3.79 trillion baht (US$115 billion) sought by the government to run the country over the next fiscal year, three quarters has been allocated for the bureaucracy. This includes a wage bill of roughly 850 billion baht, about 390 billion baht for pensions, and nearly 100 billion baht for medical benefits claimed by current or retired civil servants and their families.
The government has now committed to cutting one-third of civil service jobs to reduce this fiscal burden.
Amid heated debate on the new budget bill, one thing has become clear: Thailand has little money left for investment and development. Several economists have compared the 2027 budget to an X-ray exposing chronic disease in the Thai bureaucratic system.
Is bureaucratic reform on its way?
Nearly three million people currently work in Thailand’s public sector. Of them, 1.75 million are career civil servants and the rest are hired on a non-civil-service basis.
Thai governments have long acknowledged the need to streamline the country’s bloated bureaucracy, but significant obstacles have blocked any major overhaul.
Bureaucratic reform has been high on successive administrations’ agendas for decades, spawning multiple committees and a string of initiatives.
However, the number of government agencies and the size of its workforce have remained stubbornly high. Overlapping missions among agencies have only exacerbated the problem.
Education expert Prof Sompong Jitradub has criticised the Education Ministry as a prime example of structural failures within the public sector. At least 70% of the government’s education budget is spent on staff, with little left to upgrade schools or improve education equality and innovation, as well as teacher development.
Compounding the crisis, Thailand’s shrinking student population, driven by the falling birthrate, has not been met by any downsizing of the education workforce.
“The number of children is falling but the number of officials overseeing the education system is not,” Sompong noted.
The current government has vowed to overhaul the bureaucratic system, but with no tangible results so far.
“We will definitely undertake bureaucratic reform,” Deputy Prime Minister Pakorn Nilprapunt said, noting the government pledged the overhaul during its policy statement to Parliament in April. “It’s just that we don’t hold press conferences to announce progress every single day.”
What is the government’s plan?
Pakorn announced a series of initiatives under the government’s vision to transform from a “regulator to a facilitator” that supports both the public and private sectors.
“We will launch voluntary early-retirement programs for staff to quit public service in exchange for severance pay.”
The next step will be to eradicate bureaucratic overlap by merging agencies and scrapping those whose missions are no longer relevant.
As an example, he said it should be possible to merge the Land Bank Administration Institute (Public Organisation) with the Office of the National Land Policy Board.
He added that government agencies and public organisations whose performance had fallen below standard, such as the Strategic Transformation Office, would also be considered as candidates for merging.
“Additionally, we will change the way government agencies function by boosting digitalisation, database integration, and artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline work processes, ease admin duties, and increase public-service efficiency.”
This adoption of technology would reduce the need for human staff, he said.
However, no timeframe has been given for the planned reform. Pakorn said the overhaul would be gradual to reduce impact on the government workforce.
Prof Sompong doubts we will see any meaningful change soon, pointing out that reform requires a strong political will, whereas governments usually seek to avoid friction with the entrenched bureaucracy.
“This government will keep on delaying much-needed bureaucratic reform,” he concluded.
Recommendations from experts
Nonarit Bisonyabut, a research fellow at the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI), said Anutin’s administration would need to reduce the scope of its work before making any staff cuts.
“The government should identify its core goals and focus on them, rather than trying to accomplish everything or take on new missions.”
He advised that the government could find a balance by delegating some duties to local administrative bodies or the private sector.
However, he cautioned against cutting the government workforce with “golden handshakes”.
“If you focus solely on downsizing the workforce with early retirement programmes, you risk eliminating a huge amount of talent from the public sector.”
He pointed out that capable officials are usually the first to accept severance-pay packages because they are confident of landing a good job outside the public sector.
Nonarit also warned that cutting the civil workforce without a parallel reduction in government duties would only result in more officials being hired on separate contracts.
Wasan Luangprapat of Thammasat University’s Faculty of Political Science urged the government against adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to bureaucratic reform.
“You can’t apply one policy across all agencies,” he said. “You need to determine which agencies are overstaffed and which are not.”
He cited state-run hospitals, where ongoing shortages of medical staff mean early retirement programmes should be out of the question.
Wasan also backed the idea of curbing redundancy by tightly defining roles of central agencies, provincial authorities and local administrative bodies to eliminate overlapping missions.
For instance, jurisdiction over road construction is currently shared by the Highways Department, the Rural Roads Department, provincial administrative bodies, municipalities, subdistrict administrative organisations, the Royal Irrigation Department, and even the armed forces, leading to inefficiencies in resource use.
Sirikanya Tansakun, deputy leader of the opposition People’s Party, has demanded the government conduct a comprehensive study starting with mission mapping, before pressing ahead with bureaucratic reform.
“You need to review which agencies are essential, which are not, and whether any new agency should be established to bridge gaps,” she said.
