insolvent financial institutions instead ofclosing them down. This can lead to greater costs to the public in the In addition, shoring up financial institutions can lead to mora hazard by inducing financial institutions to undertake businesses that contain excessive risks. After the crisis, the government had to provide full guarantee to depositors in order to avoid runs on financial institutions and this has remained to the present. However, it is recognized that a deposit insurance (partial) system needs to be established as a full guarantee system tends to weaken the financial discipline of depositors who focus their attention only on returns while neglecting the quality and stability of the financial institutions that they are dealing with. This can lead to many problems in the longer term. A draft of the Deposit Insurance Act was approved by the cabinet in November 2004. Principally, the deposit guarantee will be reduced to a maximum of 1 million baht per depositor per financial institution (reduced gradually over a period of4 years). This would not affect most depositors as deposits of less than 1 baht constitute 98.6% of all million deposits in the banking system (asofMarch 2005).This Act should go through parliament in the next year or so