On 8 November 2019, SEC booth, with SEC Deputy Secretary-General Paralee Sukonthaman and SEC’s executives, welcomed the Industry Minister Uttama Savanayana who was visiting the SEC booth at the 14th Money Expo Chiang Mai 2019 at the Chiang Mai Hall, Central Plaza Chiang Mai Airport. SEC was with the responsibility to provide basic knowledge on the capital market and digital assets, to provide an understanding on the roles of  SEC and SEC Check First application, an application for searching up list of approved products, persons, and legal persons, and the Retirement-Checkup application, a website application for examining the financial health of your retirement fund plan.

Furthermore, SEC also held a seminar “SEC Caravan, Knowledge on Capital Market for the Chiang Mai People”. It is in partnership with relevant organizations in the area, including the provincial Federation of Thai Industries, the provincial Chamber of Commerce, the provincial Bankers Club, the Federation of Thai SMEs. The seminar was graced with the presence of the provincial deputy governor of Chiang Mai Mr. Wiroon Panthewee, who inaugurated and delivered the welcoming remarks for the event at Lanna Ballroom 1 at Shangri-La Hotel, Chiang Mai on Saturday 9 November 2019.

The seminar was with the objective to emphasize all-around information to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to utilize the capital market as a source of fund-raising, with book keeping and budgeting for standardized businesses, as well as to listen to the first-hand experiences from entrepreneurs who have succeeded in fund-raising. The seminar was also with the objective to provide knowledge on the capital market and the digital assets to the public under the open discussion of “How to Invest in Digital Assets, With Satisfaction, and Without Frauds”, as well as to provide consulting service relating to fund-raising, and to provide knowledge on investment in the capital market throughout the seminar.

SEC Deputy Secretary-General Paralee Sukonthaman said that Chiang Mai has the potential for investment and fund-raising as it has GDP of 230 billion Thai baht in 2018, meanwhile in 2019, the value of the capital market, it was found that over 76,000 accounts had started investing in stock with over 100,000 fund accounts, which is the most a province in the Northern region has. Moreover, in the last 5 years, Chiang Mai has had 2 approved companies proving the sale of their stock to the public: Initial Public Offering (IPO), with a total of fund-raising value for over 900 million Thai baht. This reflects that there still are chances that even more entrepreneurs would be able to raise funds via the capital market. Furthermore, SEC had been continuously operating its “SEC Caravan to the Provincial Areas” program since June 2019, including 5 provinces, Nakhon Sawan, Khon Kaen, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Udon Thani, and Chiang Mai, which had received a huge amount of attention from the local public.

At the same time, from 8 – 10 November 2019,  SEC also launched a parallel activity, providing knowledge on the capital market and the accounting career path to the students of 6 universities in Chiang Mai and nearby provinces, with a total of 1,100 students. This marks the first time of such activity, travelling and providing knowledge and experiences, with direct involvement by  SEC, in accordance with  SEC policy to increase the number of auditors in the capital market, to prevent the possible lack of auditors in the future.

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