Thaipat Institute and the Foundation For Thailand Rural Reconstruction Movement are among organisations dedicated in CSR research in Thailand. Recently, they presented the “Responsible Business Conduct in Thailand” report to the Asia-Pacific conference where multi-national organisations like OECD, UN ESCAP and International Labour Organisation attended.

            Highlighted in the report are the number of enterprises in Thailand. It showed that from 2,836,377 enterprises as of 2008, large enterprises (LEs) accounted for 4,586 or 0.2 per cent while the rest are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Seventy per cent of the LEs are in the Greater Bangkok. On the contrary, only 30 per cent of SMEs are in the Greater Bangkok.

            Despite the small percentage, LEs contributed Bt2.21 trillion to the gross domestic product (GDP), or 46.3 per cent; while SMEs contributed Bt3.45 trillion or 37.9 per cent. As of 2007, all of them employed 11.71 million workers including 2.81 million by LEs or 24 per cent.

            What the data shows are as follows:

Both LEs and SMEs play a role in boosting the economy.

SMEs’ job creation, which led to income distribution, is 3 times higher than LEs.

 While 70 per cent of LEs’ CSR is in the Greater Bangkok, 70 per cent SMEs’ CSR are in provinces.

The report also contained a survey on CSR awareness, covering 4,350 respondents. While only 30.46 per cent of businesses in the Greater Bangkok never leant about CSR, the awareness ratio among provincial enterprises was only 38.22 per cent.

Yet, by answering that they did not know CSR does not mean that their

enterprises have never involved in a social project. They just did not know that the projects are part of the CSR, which encompass a wide range of activities like good governance, ethical business doing, product liability, donations, volunteering. At the end of the survey, after explained the long list of CSR activities, 3,853 respondents or 96 per cent said they were aware of CSR.

            Due to different levels of awareness and development, it requires different strategies to drive CSR activities in each region and each province, taking into account the rural context.

By Pipat Yodprutikarn