TDRI Quarterly Review: December 2017

Abstract

Currently, the Thai government allocates a vast amount of budget to fund several social projects. However, due to limited resources, the budget is not sufficient to serve all the needs of social members who are heterogeneous. Moreover, social services provided by the government often are focused on solving existing problems rather than providing preventative measures which could eliminate problems that might occur in the future. The current public budget allocation system does not have a mechanism which reflects the effectiveness and efficiency of projects, the reason being that the public system lacks systematic monitoring and evaluation procedures due to the limited resources. On the other hand, awareness of social issues by other sectors, including the private sector and the general public, has been increasing significantly. This is reflected in an increasing number of corporate social responsibility projects carried out by businesses, and an increasing amount of donations from general citizens. Nonetheless, there is still a lack of systematic monitoring and evaluation procedures, just as in the public system. A TDRI research team believes that Thailand could benefit greatly from the social impact partnership model (SIPM), which engages and brings together the public sector, the private sector and the social sector. SIPM can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of existing and forthcoming social services. Currently, there are 89 SIPM projects operating in 19 countries around the world.