"The Bank of Thailand as the central bank of Thailand has a main task to manage the overall economic and financial system of the country to operate smoothly and to support the country's economy to grow with stability and sustainability. From the foundation, it has been adopted into three elements to create reliability for the present's tasks: having principles, adhering to the principle of rightness, and foreseeing the benefits of the country as key, creating transparency in the decision-making process, and creating an environment that allows the organization's officials to have morality and good governance," she explained.
The deputy governor elaborated that adhering to principles and considering the benefits of the country as the key has always been a tone from the top. At present, within the organization, all employees will be thought of as not taking advantage of anyone whether from the internal or external persons.
We don't work to please anyone or to seek popularity. The BoT must explain our ideas and opinions to the public clearly. We will not do anything that cannot be explained to society. Anything we do or think, we have to be able to explain why we act or think this way," she noted.
Besides having straightforward working principles, the BoT's task must also go through a process called "Thinking around, and be able to explain" so that alternatives can be sought and weighed appropriately, comprehensively, and able to answer the public's queries.
The Bank of Thailand also vows to create transparency in the decision-making process and make it auditable.
What has changed after the Tom Yum Kung economic crisis is that the BoT will use decision-making in a collective format to prevent group thinking. There are checks and balances in the decision-making power of various committees, whether it be the BoT Board, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the Financial Institutions Policy Committee (FIPC), or the Payment Systems Committee (PSC). Each of which has a higher proportion of external committees than the BoT's officials, ensuring that the ideas of BoT officials cannot dominate policy decisions. The decision-making is transparent because there is a data storage and communication system so that it can always be traced back. For example, at the MPC meeting, minutes of the meeting are disclosed to the public. After every meeting, questions were answered, clarifying doubts in many forums.
Last but not least is creating an environment that allows executives and employees to perform their duties according to moral principles, have good governance, and support people in the organization to be good and moral people. One thing that will help reduce the chance for corruption is providing appropriate remunerations and welfare so that there won't be a loophole or at least reduce the chance that a person may exercise their power to benefit themselves or others.
"We must not discourage good people or not make our people feel that being a good person is difficult," Mrs. Mallikamas added that apart from the BoT's regulations that meet the standards of the bureaucracy, another area that the BoT is very concentrated on is awareness regarding Conflict of Interest.
The BoT set clear rules regarding the prohibition of investing in assets related to matters under supervision. Although some committees are not directly involved in policy decision-making, the BoT has notified the conditions for the committee to avoid having an involvement since the public doesn't know who is or isn't involved, which may have a scandal after that. Thus, we ask for refraining. Unless there is a truly necessary incident, there are rules to support what must be done in order to ensure that those are based on the principles of transparency and good governance.
Although the BoT has never had any scandals regarding corruption, the BoT has established measures to promote transparency and prevent corruption. For BoT employees to use as a guideline for performing their duties. (Information from the BoT website https://www.bot.or.th/th/about-us/good-governance/transparency/measure.html)
The measures are included: 1. Measures for disseminating information to the public 2. Measures for stakeholders. 3. Measures to promote transparency in procurement. 4. Measures and guidelines for handling corruption complaints. 5. Measures to prevent bribery. 6. Measures to prevent conflicts between personal interests and public interests, and 7. Measures to inspect the use of discretion.
"Regarding the honesty and integrity that the BoT has always adhered with, an organization must help reduce the risk of employees falling into precarious circumstances while creating pride in that honesty and integrity to maintain reliability in the performance of the central bank's duties," the deputy governor of the Thai Central Bank concluded.
*This exclusive interview translation is funded by the National Anti-Corruption Fund (NACF).
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National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), Thailand
The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) is a constitutional independent organization and supervised by nine commissioners selected from various professions. It is authorised to undertake work on the prevention and suppression of malfeasance, particularly in government agencies, on assets investigations, as well as on the monitoring of ethics and virtues of political position holders.
It has the authority to file charges in court as well as support and build up awareness of the penalties for committing corruption. The NACC is supervised by the NACC Board and has the Office of the NACC as its administrative agency.
Since 1997, Thai Courts have ruled against and punished politicians, former ministers, high-ranking government officials as well as executives of the private sector in the thousands of cases submitted by the NACC.
