Commerce minister to enterprises: Increase CSR activities
Deputy Prime Minister and Commerce Minister Jurin Laksanawisit said he would like to see more social enterprises use their profits to support social activities in a more concrete way than ordinary businesses.
“If social enterprises are engaged in fewer CSR [corporate social responsibility] activities than ordinary businesses then they are no better than the latter,” the deputy PM told a seminar on social enterprise development hosted by the Office of Social Enterprise Promotion on Monday (Sep. 16).
“The first issue that social enterprises need to figure out is how to distinguish themselves from ordinary businesses that regularly undertake CSR campaigns.
“The second important issue is how to prevent ordinary businesses from taking advantage and becoming pseudo-social enterprises, especially since social enterprises are entitled to special privileges such as tax exemptions,” he added.
Jurin urged the enterprises and related agencies to come up with measures to help secure sustainable funding sources for social activities to maintain the efficiency of operations.