Today (22 January 2020) in the lobby on second floor of the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), Head Office, Bang Khen, a signing ceremony was held for a memorandum of understanding on “Dissemination of Financial and Investment Literacy and Promotion of Savings for Students and Youth,” between Apirom Sukprasert, BAAC Manager, Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, SEC Secretary-General, for the cooperation to disseminate knowledge on finance, investment and savings and to train personnel to ensure they have financial knowledge and understanding so that they can transfer it to students and youth in the BAAC School Bank project in over 2,000 schools nationwide.

BAAC Manager Apirom Sukprasert said that the BAAC focuses on educating students with financial knowledge, creating savings discipline, training students on correct financial management principles, encouraging responsibility and instilling the habit of spending time on activities that are beneficial to the community by establishing a school bank project. Such project has been in operation since 2008. The collaboration between the BAAC and SEC on this occasion is part of the education on finance and investment and savings promotion for students and youth in the School Bank project by holding activities, providing public relations materials and ensuring the readiness of personnel so that they will have the knowledge of and understand this collaboration and can transfer financial knowledge to students accordingly. Currently, 2,330 schools have joined the School Bank project and there are over 800,000 accounts with a total deposit of over THB 1 billion.

SEC Secretary-General Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol said that the cooperation between the two agencies is beneficial to education which is the most important part in developing the country. It is aimed at promoting concrete knowledge of finance and investment, instilling financial and savings discipline and the concept of saving before spending among children and youth. Saving is a basic essential life skill while investment is a crucial tool for creating sustainable wealth and adding value to savings in the long term. The BAAC has the School Bank project that instills the habit of regular saving in children and youth which has been running consecutively for 11 years. It is therefore a good opportunity for SEC, which has strategies for developing capital markets and promoting long-term savings, to support learning materials appropriate for children and youth via such project consisting of a large number of school bank members, including assisting the School Bank project in other aspects in an integrated manner, such as provision of training on capital market knowledge for BAAC employees to educate students under the project accordingly.

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