Govt may collect deposits in inactive accounts
DEPOSITS held in bank accounts that have been inactive for at least 10 years will be collected by the government under a proposed move by the Finance Ministry.
A source at the ministry said the Fiscal Policy Office had drafted a law enabling the action, and this would be put to a public hearing as required by the constitution.
Under the proposed law, the funds in these dormant accounts would be transferred to the country’s treasury cash balance “for more efficient account management that would be to the nation's benefit”.
Based on the draft of the law, the affected inactive accounts would be closed and the funds would be pooled into an account managed by the Comptroller's General Department.
At present, there are no conditions set down for the management of inactive deposit accounts at financial institutions , including commercial banks and specialised financial institutIons , nor are there any guidelines for the monitoring of such accounts, the source said.
The accounts subject to the proposed law include the savings accounts and current accounts of people living in Thailand or abroad. The accounts may be in baht or foreign currencies at financial institutions including commercial banks, the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, Government Housing Bank, Government Savings Bank and Islamic Bank of Thailand.
The proposed law would exclude fixed-deposit accounts, deposit accounts as collateral for debt repayment to financial institutions, confiscated or frozen deposit accounts or any other deposit accounts defined by the ministry’s announcements. Inactive deposit accounts, for the purpose of the new law, are defined as those in which there have no transactions for at least 10 years.
Financial institutions will be required to look into their deposit accounts before the end of the year, to ascertain the status of these accounts. For those accounts that appear inactive, the institutions are required to contact the account holders or their heirs by the end of the year.
If the account holders or their heirs do not respond within the required period, the financial institutions can close these inactive accounts and deliver both the data and the funds to the Comptroller's General Department.
The department will be required to open an account for management of inactive accounts at these financial institutions and the funds in such accounts will be set aside for the nation's treasury cash balance.
