Page 164 - Social Enterprise A New Business Paradigm for Thailand

The Grameen-affiliated businesses operate as an interdependent ecosystem. Grameen Bank,
Grameen Trust, and the Grameen Fund serve as foundational pillars, consistently seeking ways to

provide funding, facilitate internal trade, strengthen shared capabilities, and encourage
knowledge exchange among personnel. They also offer reciprocal services that support one
another’s operations. Yunus’s far-reaching vision, combined with a system for knowledge
exchange and a cross-subsidization or “Robin Hood” pricing model (charging higher prices to the
wealthy to help the poor), has yielded globally recognized results. His experience highlights the
critical importance of cultivating an ecosystem for social business, both to nurture the next
generation of entrepreneurs and to drive sustained impact.

Some may wonder why Thailand does not have a bank modeled after Grameen. The answer lies

in the fact that Thailand had already enacted the Cooperative Act in 1928, several decades before
the founding of Grameen Bank, as a means of addressing rural debt and poverty. This legal
foundation paved the way for the establishment of savings cooperatives in 1949, followed by
credit union cooperatives in 1965 and the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives
(BAAC) in 1966. Each of these institutions was created to expand financial access, particularly for
underserved communities. Notably, credit union cooperatives in Thailand operate as
microfinance institutions that provide financial services to low-income individuals excluded from
the formal banking system. One striking observation is that although Grameen Bank was
established later, in 1976, it quickly gained recognition for its success and rapid organizational

growth. As of 2022, the bank operated over 2,568 branches serving more than 10 million
members, 97% of them women, with total assets amounting to approximately 301 billion
Bangladeshi Taka, or around USD 2.4 billion (Grameen Annual Report, 2022). By comparison,
Thailand’s savings cooperatives in 2022, based on available data from active institutions,
numbered 1,364, with a combined membership of 3.44 million and total assets of about 3.14
trillion baht, or roughly USD 93 billion (LH Bank, 2023). Meanwhile, credit union cooperatives
totaled around 1,000 organizations, serving over 1 million members, with combined assets

exceeding 82 billion baht, or approximately USD 2.5 billion (Thai Federation of Credit Union
Cooperatives, 2022).

Although these institutions share a common commitment to improving quality of life through
financial tools, emphasizing self-reliance, mutual assistance, education, capacity building, and
community empowerment, they differ in significant ways, particularly in terms of target groups
and operational models. Thai cooperatives primarily serve salaried individuals and rely on payroll
deduction systems, while BAAC focuses on farmers. In contrast, Grameen Bank targets low-
income rural populations, especially women, using a group-based loan guarantee model. There

are also key differences in governance structures and funding sources.

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