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As part of its aim to improve the standard of living in the UAE community and in line with its commitment to raise awareness and educate young people about different personal financial matters and in particular ‘savings’ concepts, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) recently organised a saving and personal budgeting introductory workshop for students from the Fujairah Educational Zone (FEZ).
HE Musabah Mohammed Al Suwaidi, Assistant Undersecretary of Support Services Sector at MoF, headed the MoF delegation which organised the workshop and included a number of the Ministry’s officials and directors. The workshop was attended by Mohammed Rashed Al Zahmi, Head of the Environmental and School Activities Department at the Fujairah Educational Zone (FEZ) and targeted students from the Madhab Secondary School for Girls, Merbeh Secondary School for Girls and Um Al Mumeneen Secondary School for Girls.
The workshop kicked off with a short film about the community events carried out by MoF and a presentation which discussed the Ministry’s role and strategy. Additionally, the Ministry made a presentation about saving and personal budgeting which featured a number of , topics, such as the difference between savings and over savings, facts about savings, the family’s role in promoting a savings culture, as well as the role of savings in the development of the national economy and the GDP.
The Ministry was also keen to introduce the students to the economic cycle in income and the need to create a balance in spending between four key sectors, which include consumer spending, investment spending, government spending and spending on imports. MoF also provided advice to students, encouraging them to save money in the future.
Commenting on the workshop, HE Younis Haji Al Khouri, Undersecretary of MoF, said: “MoF believes in spreading knowledge about the importance of saving money amongst students, whereby the Ministry seeks to provide full support to young people, as this next generation will shape the future of the UAE.”
HE added: “The Ministry believes in the importance of organising regular meetings in various areas of the country, to help build a sustainable partnership with various members of the community and offer them support in the management and use of their finances, which benefits both them and the national economy.”
The Ministry also presented international comparisons between household saving rates, personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income (DPI) in the U.S and household debt as a percentage of GDP. In addition, MoF reviewed the results of a study conducted by the agency ‘Yougov Siraj’ on the outlooks of UAE savings, which revealed that 83% of community members believe that their savings are enough to secure their future, 74% do not save on regular basis, 27% of the population believe that the circumstances are not suitable to save money and 25% of Emiratis do not save at all.
Furthermore, participants were also presented with an overview of the E- Dirham system and what’s been achieved with it from 2010 to 2013. This covered the challenges faced by the Ministry in creating it, the mechanisms adopted to implement the system’s services, the quality of services for payments and collection through the system, the methods of payments and the fees for using the system and future payment methods.
MoF organised an awareness campaign about “Efficient financial planning for you and your family to secure the future of your children” earlier this year in collaboration with Emirates Transport, whereby school buses carried the message to gain the attention of the community.
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