Recently, I received a special request from a friend calling for the need to educate people about saving issues, especially after receiving social protection payouts. He believes that we must work like the rest of the world by activating the savings of children, women, and the elderly to deposit them in banks and available investment channels. In general, saving requires the head of the family to organise this matter, and to be firm in directing his family members to go towards saving, even with small amounts, regardless of monthly financial obligations.
The issue of enhancing the savings and investment aspect of families requires more awareness and encouragement at all levels. Today, by obtaining social protection benefits, families can invest some of these amounts in savings channels and deposit them monthly in a bank account to benefit them in the future.
Accordingly, financial and banking institutions and civil society in general are responsible for organising savings programs to attract more individuals, and push them towards saving, with the need to be careful to clarify and educate people about the negatives that could affect them by moving towards debt instead of benefiting from programs. savings. All families also need to set a budget and work with it to maintain household financial stability, with the need to get rid of their debts, and not to drown themselves in buying unnecessary goods and luggage because that leads to additional expenses.
Omani banks, for their part, bear this responsibility to attract savings and implement the policies by encouraging people. In past years, it had programmes related to distributing monetary and moral financial prizes to customers for depositors, which led to some racing to deposit their money in savings.
However, these programmes were stopped because of some social reasons by a decision of the Central Bank of Oman. In one of the opinion polls surveys conducted by the National Center for Statistics and Information in March 2017, it showed that 56% of the population have accounts or deposits in one of the banks operating in the Sultanate of Oman, including 68% of Omanis, compared to 46% of expatriates.
It was also found that 85% of individuals believe that winning bank prizes can make a major change in an individual’s life, while 83% of them believe that bank prizes encourage saving and enhance customer loyalty to their banks, and 81% of them believe that it is a good field for investment. Today we need to conduct more scientific studies in this regard to find out the percentages that the Omani citizen saves monthly or annually, intensify programmes concerned with savings, and exploit all channels available to educational, religious and community institutions to talk about this topic.
Social protection payouts can help banking institutions by benefiting from them in providing facilities to institutions and expanding businesses in the country and relying on them for internal borrowing operations instead of going to borrowing from abroad.
Omani families and educational institutions have the responsibility of instilling a culture of saving in children and providing them with means to help them achieve the purpose. Savings in general develop local economies and contribute to financing internal projects, which requires banking institutions and civil society to give importance to saving and work to adhere to it in financial planning.
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