Kanwal Naseer

Lack of awareness about financial literacy is the leading cause of poor financial decision-making that’s stressing the Pakistani economy, reports WealthPK. Financial literacy is the education and understanding of how the money is made, spent and saved as well as the skills and ability to use the financial resources to make decisions. The State Bank of Pakistan recently launched the National Financial Literacy Program for Youth (NFLP-Y) through the National Institute of Banking and Finance (NIBAF).

The basic purpose of the program is to equip the youth with the basic financial understanding so that they can take effective and independent financial decisions. In an interview with WealthPK, Miss Zareen Iqbal, Vice Principle of Memon Industrial and Technical Institute (MITI), Karachi, said the National Financial Literacy Program for Youth is a very successful and impressive program of the State Bank of Pakistan.

She said if a child is not taught the value of saving, budgeting, and giving up short-term desires in favour of long-term goals, he will grow up with the habit of spending and never saving or investing, which is likely to damage his future because he won't have a plan for a coming crisis. She said MITI has been imparting this training to the youth for the last four years. ‘’Our trainers teach the students how they can save money and benefit from it in future.

The main focus of the training is to teach the students how to reduce unnecessary expenses and gain long-term benefits. The students are told how to start a business by cutting down unnecessary expenses,’’ Miss Zareen said. Sharing some success stories of the institute, she said, ‘’Some of our students saved their money and started their own beauty salons. This is the biggest success of our training program.

The National Financial Literacy Program for the youth has helped our students to become successful entrepreneurs. There are many students of our institute who saved money and started small business and now they are earning 50 to 60k per month. This training encourages a student to be self-reliant.

In the end, I would like to say that such training programs should continue on a long-term basis so that more students, especially girls, could become successful entrepreneurs.’’ According to WealthPK, financial understanding through this course has infused a new confidence into the youth to tackle financial setbacks and think through alternative methods to overcome them.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk