Cooperative in Thailand -> Cooperative Movement in Thailand

 

Cooperatives in Thailand, like in all developing countries, have been initiated by the government since 1915 with the prime aim of using as a means to improve the livelihood of small farmers. This is due to the increasing indebtedness problem resulting from farmers who were suffering from the shifting of self-sufficient economy to trade economy. The natural disaster such as drought and flood even added further to create more chronic and severe indebtedness to the farmers. Consequently, they lost their farmland and becoming laborers and thus leaving their debts unpaid.

The first cooperative in Thailand named Wat Chan Cooperative Unlimited Liability was established by the government on February 26, 1916, in Phitsanulok, following the Raiffeisen credit cooperative type with a single purpose of providing farm credit and being organized as a small village credit cooperative to help the severely indebted farmers. The success of this cooperative type in preventing many farmers' land from being foreclosed by the moneylenders led to the increasing number of small village credit cooperatives all over the country. The small credit cooperatives had prevailed in the country until 1938 other cooperative types then established in responding to the people's needs.

In 1966, the government-cum-credit cooperative-owned Bank for Cooperatives was reorganized to the “Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives” a state enterprise, functioning as a financial center of agricultural cooperatives including lending directly to individual farmers.

In 1968 with the objective to strengthen the cooperative movement, the Government enacted the Cooperative Act, 1968, which allowed the establishment of the Cooperative League of Thailand, functioning as the apex organization of the cooperative movement. The said Cooperative Act also allowed for the amalgamation program which combined the neighboring small village credit cooperatives, paddy and marketing cooperatives, land improvement and land settlement cooperatives into a large scale cooperative at district level performing multipurpose functions and were officially categorized as agricultural cooperatives.


At present, the cooperatives in Thailand are officially categorized to seven (7) types, namely:

  1. Agricultural Cooperative,
  2. Land Settlement Cooperative,
  3. Fisheries Cooperative,
  4. Consumer Cooperative,
  5. Saving and Credit Cooperative,
  6. Service Cooperative, and
  7. Credit Union Cooperatives

 

 
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The Federation of Savings and Credit Cooperatives of Thailand Limited (FSCT)
199 Moo 2, Nakhon in Road, Bang Si Thong Subdistrict, Bang Kruai District, Nonthaburi Province, 11130
Tel: (+66) 2496 1199 Fax: (+66) 2496 1177 , (+66) 2496 1188  E-mail:
contact@fsct.com