Financial education has had a critical role in equipping consumers with knowledge to utilise e-payments responsibly, and to help consumers protect themselves from risks of financial scams that exploit specific vulnerabilities associated with online payment platforms. Financial education has also been a lynchpin in our efforts to encourage retirement planning. As life expectancy increases, consumers are expected to effectively plan and manage their finances for their retirement. Specific financial education are being introduced, particularly for individuals at the early stages of entering the workforce to provide the relevant information and skills to save and manage funds for their retirement. A further objective of financial education is to reinforce the consumer protection agenda including to be adequately protected against market failures and misaligned incentives. This has become more relevant in the recent period with increasing global pressures being exerted to significantly strengthen prudential and market conduct regulation following the global financial crisis. Emerging economies in particular continue to face practical challenges in embracing global standards in a manner that is also aligned with enhancing opportunities for inclusive finance. Financial education is an important link in the efforts to build a financial system that is resilient against crises and abuse, while limiting the adverse socio-economic implications that can arise. While the government has a key role in driving the financial education agenda, the private sector also needs to be actively engaged in the education of financial consumers.

Since the unprecedented sell-offs in May, there have been some recent corrections to the initial overreactions. Nevertheless, capital movements and asset prices continue to be volatile and pose headwinds to growth and financial stability. The summer period provided a brief respite and provided investors with more time to be selective, not treating all EMEs as one single asset class. Economic fundamentals became a primary consideration for assessing in which market to remain invested. We trust that Thailand will continue to receive the attention of foreign investors because of our sound fundamentals and attractive prospects. These, notwithstanding the current soft patches as the economy consolidates and work on its long term competitiveness agenda. Role of monetary and financial policies in safeguarding stability Long before the Subprime and the Eurozone crises, Thailand had our own economic crisis of 1997. We experienced a setback that took us more than half a decade to recover. Since then we learnt the virtue of moderation and prudence. Firms had to deleverage, banks recapitalized, regulatory standards, governance reforms and bank lending practices have improved markedly. The government’s fiscal framework was also strengthened following the fiscalization of the costs of financial sector restructuring. Years of hard work and reform efforts paid off and laid the foundation for a more diversified and competitive economy. The availability of policy space both in the fiscal, monetary and financial policies, helped ensure a much needed domestic source of growth when global trade collapsed in 2008. Timely government stimulus helped shore up domestic demand.