Two weeks back, the Bank of Thailand had rolled out the first ever government savings bond disbursement platform powered by blockchain technology built by IBM. Using the platform, the central bank sold over $1.60 billion worth savings bonds, as per a media release made by IBM on October 5, 2020.
The utilization of blockchain technology has caused a sharp decline in bond issuance time from 15 days to a matter of two days. In addition to an improvement in efficiency of the bond issuance process, operational costs have come down along with avoidance of unnecessary verification of records used for bond issuance.
For the aforementioned business, IBM, together with the central bank, partnered with seven more institutions including Public Debt Management Office, Thai Bond Market Association, Thailand Securities Depository Co., and four more banks. Very soon, the Bank of Thailand aims to widen the use of blockchain technology for disbursing all kinds of government issued bonds for large and small (retail) investors.
The Thai central bank remains proactive in blockchain and crypto domain. Earlier in June, the bank began trialing its CBDC (central bank digital currency), the digital baht, among large enterprises. A month later, the bank started preparing to use its digital currency to deal with the HKMA (Hong Kong Monetary Authority).
The Bank of Thailand is also working on smart contracts and decentralized finance use scenarios for its digital baht.
