earlier, a number of welcoming developments are taking place in our financial sector. but, much more can be done and need to be done to foster an ecosystem that promotes the overall sustainability — that will discourage misallocation of resources, limit corruptive practices, and help preserve our environment. adoption of best practices in sustainability is not just about making positive impacts to our society, but it can also be beneficial to financial institutions in a number of ways. first, it can help ensure long - term sustainability of financial institutions themselves. growing acceptance of sustainability practices globally has encouraged new standards and practices and raised the expectation of our society. early adopters of sustainability practices can meet society ’ s ever - increasing expectation ; take lead in setting new industry standards ; and make timely and necessary adjustment to their business models. these sustainability practices will help financial institutions mitigate strategic, operational, and reputational risks. second, financial institutions can better attract and retain a new generation of talents, especially the millennials, who are increasingly more attracted to firms with sustainability and philanthropic practices4. this is no surprise because these young individuals are becoming more concerned of sustainability issues and want to take part in making positive impacts. therefore, firms with strong sustainability values and practices can attract these talents by offering the additional satisfaction beyond remuneration benefits. third, adoption of sustainability can help financial institutions gain access to increasing pool of capitals, given the increasing volume of funds and investment products based on sustainability the 2017 millennial impact report. the millennial impact project, 2017. 5 / 6 criteria. it is estimated that more than a quarter of assets under management globally are now invested using the environment, social, and governance or esg principles5. ladies and gentlemen, it is now up to all of us — financial institutions, policymakers, and leaders — to embrace sustainability and incorporate its guiding principles in our daily lives and business practices. the objective of the bangkok sustainable banking forum is to raise awareness of the various issues of sustainability and identify gaps within our financial sector. seeing much enthusiasm from our high - level participants this morning, i am certain we can make positive changes for our future generations. i would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to be here with us. i would also like to thank the speakers, some of whom have traveled from different parts of the globe, for being here to share to with us their insights and best practices. let me, once again, urge all of us

that the bank of thailand has maintained for the past 5 years and is now beginning to bear fruits. the accommodative monetary policy resulted in robust growth of mortgage lending as well as other types of consumer loans. consumer confidence rose to its highest level in recent years. domestic investments improved too. i agree that at the moment not much of the new business investment was yet financed by bank loans. the entrepreneurs still rely more on their internal cash. but the latest investment indicators showed an annual rate of increase at a high of 23 %. domestic demands have been helped not only by direct government spending, but also by other government schemes that injected funds directly to the grass roots. we had the bht 74 billion village fund ( approx us $ 1. 7 billion ) whereby each village had been allocated bht one million to on lend to village members, often under group mutual guarantees. we also had the micro loan scheme organised by the government savings bank, the government owned bank, which lend directly to the poor. ladies and gentlemen, the good news went on. despite the strong recovery, we have been able to keep inflation under check. headline inflation for 2002 was 0. 7 % and core inflation 0. 4 %. the adverse affect from high oil prices has not translated into much inflation. our currency was also quite stable. for the whole of 2002, the bath appreciated against the us dollar by less than 2 %, which was quite modest compared to other asian currencies. the international reserves level was also ample at us $ 38. 9 billion, allowing us to aim to pay back all the loans under the imf program by the end of july this year. moreover, three major credit rating agencies, s & p, moody ’ s, and fitch ratings, all assigned better outlook to the thai economy. japan credit rating agency did in fact upgrade thailand ’ s sovereign rating from bbb to bbb + last november. such widespread improvement in confidence among consumers, entrepreneurs, and investors helped support both consumption and investment throughout the year. we have also made a substantial progress in solving the non - performing loan problem. the thai asset management corporation, the central organization run by the government that took over bht 700 billion of npl ’ s from the commercial bank system has already worked through two - thirds of their portfolio. the recovery rate was 135 % of the tamc ’ s purchase prices, which was the banks ’ written down value. this means that the tamc should not add any further