Bangko Sentral encourages students to save

AS PART of its financial literacy campaign, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is visiting selected schools to encourage students to save.

Cebu City was the fifth leg, and second to the last stop of the campaign, said BSP acting director Leonides Sumbi.

The Bangko Sentral team reached out to students in Grades 1 to 10 under its Economic and Financial Learning Program (EFLP).

Sumbi said they encouraged the students to open savings accounts. Among the schools they visited in Cebu were Colegio dela Inmaculada Concepcion, Guadalupe Elementary School and Ramon Duterte Memorial National High School.

Since the start of its campaign, the central bank has helped some 600,000 students open savings accounts.

Miguel Villa-Real, president of the Bank Marketing Association of the Philippines, said they were targeting at least a million students with savings accounts before the year ends.

Participating banks include the Philippine National Bank, BDO, Unibank, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Development Bank of the Philippines.

Due to time constraints and lack of manpower, Villa-Real said they were not able to go to all the schools in the city.

Apart from this, Bangko Sentral is launching several other activities, namely: Be up to Speed on BSP, Financial Education Expo, and Paghahanda para sa Kinabukasan.

All activities are aimed at educating students, regular employees, and overseas Filipino workers on financial stability, basics on budgeting, saving and investing, and financial planning. The events will also include discussions on economic development and BSP’s role in the economy.

Given all the activities, Sumbi said it would have been better if they had more time to be able to reach out to more people.

“We don’t have any problems with the materials or resources for the activities. The availability and the participation of the community is the challenge for us,” she said.

She cited that especially for the overseas Filipino workers, it is very difficult to be able to get a large number of people to participate. With a longer time frame for the activities, they could have given more seminar schedules and have more people attend.