18+ Savings Accounts specially introduced by the Nation’s Premier Bank - Bank of Ceylon, targeting Sri Lankan youth just coming out of School, offer number of unique benefits to account holders. The scholarship awarded to high performers of GCE (Advanced Level) Examination is one such benefit.

Bank of Ceylon recently held a charming Ceremony at its Head Office, to award 78 Scholarships of Rs. 30,000/- each to scholarship winners who sat for the GCE (A/L) Examination in year 2006. Every year 5 candidates each from all 4 streams of Physical Science (Maths), Biological Science, Commerce and Arts are selected island wide from those who earn the highest score in the GCE (A/L) Examination and awarded Merit Scholarships. In addition further number of scholarships are awarded corresponding to the age of the bank. Accordingly bank awarded 10 Merit Scholarships and 68 Anniversary Scholarships for 18+ Account holders selected randomly through a draw held from those who entered the Universities in the year 2007 through the Advance Level Examination held in the year 2006.

For the first time Bank also awarded 3 scholarships each for 10 provinces for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd best results of each province in the GCE (O/L) Examination held in year 2007. These scholarships valued at Rs. 25,000, Rs. 20,000 and Rs. 15,000/- were awarded purely on merit for the candidates of GCE. (O/L) Examination, without even having to maintain an account with the bank.

The Chief Guest of this Ceremony was Hon. Susil Premajayantha, Minister of Education accompanied by Hon. Ranjith Siyambalapitiya, Minister of Finance & State Revenue and Deputy Minister of Finance & Planning. Dr. Gamini Wickremasinghe Chairman Bank of Ceylon, Mr. B A C Fernando General Manager Bank of Ceylon, Corporate and Executive Management of the Bank and a larger number of parents of Scholarship Winners too were present.

In his speech the Chairman disclosed that bank is involved in number of Educational Projects under it’s CSR for the benefit of the children in rural and remote areas. Bank has allocated Rs. 3.0Mn. for O/L and A/L Scholarship Programmes, already spent Rs. 3.5Mn for "Spell Master" Programme to improve the English Education, to conduct workshops island wide for Year 5 scholarships further Rs. 3.0 Mn. is reserved and for 1250 Scholarships for RKG Account holders in the Year 5 Scholarship Examination bank spends further Rs. 12.5 Mn. Chairman further stated that bank intends to implement projects in all sorts of sport activities too in order to popularize them island wide.