Every year on October 31, Cambodia and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mark the ASEAN Savings Day. This is in line with World Savings Day, which was established on October 31, 1924, during the 1st International Savings Bank Congress in Milano, Italy. The World Savings Day is to encourage people to put their savings in banks or other formal financial institutions rather than keeping it under their mattress.
The ASEAN Savings Day (ASD), an initiative of the ASEAN Working Committee for Financial Inclusion, aims to raise public awareness on the importance of savings in line with the efforts of promoting financial inclusion in the ASEAN region. Saving is crucial for future needs and emergency, thus the ASEAN Savings Day helps to promote the culture of saving, which will help mobilize savings and contribute to better financial management.
Cambodia, like its ASEAN peers, has been promoting and enhancing financial inclusion through its National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2019-2025. One of the main priorities in Cambodia's National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS 2019-2025) is to encourage people to save. The objective here is to enhance financial inclusion by increasing access to quality formal financial services, reducing financial exclusion of women by half from 27% to 13%, increasing usage of formal financial services from 59% to 70% by 2025 as well as improving household welfare and supporting economic growth.
Financial inclusion plays a crucial role in poverty reduction in Cambodia. Enabling the underserved population or small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to access affordable financial services would create and broaden potential economic activities across the sectors, according to ASEAN's report on Measuring Progress Financial Inclusion in Selected ASEAN countries 2020.
Cambodia has made great strides in promoting financial inclusion through countrywide and market-oriented financial sector development, enhancement of financial literacy through all means, reduction of cost in using financial services to a reasonable level, and enabling financial infrastructure and Fin-Tech development for more convenient and more efficient access to financial services, the report noted.
To achieve these objectives in Cambodia's National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS 2019-2025), various priority activities have been identified. They include:
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Assistant Governor and Director General of Banking Supervision at the National Bank of Cambodia
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Vice-chair at The Association of Banks in Cambodia (ABC)
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Chairman at Cambodia Microfinancec Association
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Director, Macro-Surveillance and Supervisory Data Management National Bank of Cambodia
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Deputy CEO / Head of Community Financial Services of Maybank Cambodia
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Head of Deposit at WB Finance
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