The Central Bank of Nigeria is to outsource its non-core activities as part of its restructuring exercise.
The CBN Governor Prof .Charles Soludo, who disclosed this in an interview at the weekend in Lagos, said that a large portion of the various CBN housing estates spread across the country, would be privatised.
�A large chunk of the estates would be sold off. This is part of the new direction of the CBN. We want to restructure our spending. When we begin to privatise and outsource, we can better devote our resources both material or financial for better results,� he said.
According to Soludo, the CBN is redirecting its focus on its mandate of micro- economic stability and improved monetary management.
He said that for the CBN to be able to play its role very well, it needed to be restructured.
Soludo said, �You need a strong CBN that has the capacity to function. And so we are currently undergoing a process of restructuring of the bank itself. Among other things, we have created an Economic Policy Division. We are trying to recruit of economists. In the next one year, the CBN must have the largest concentration of economists in the country to be able to shape the process of continued policy analysis, formulation and implementation� .
Soludo who disclosed that the much talked about N1, 000 note would be introduced next May, explained that high demand for new notes and the cost implications of printing them, make the need for a higher denomination imperative.
He disclosed that about 4.5 billion new currency notes were needed every year in the country, saying this required huge sum of money to print.
Although Soludo said the new N1, 000 would be printed by a foreign company, the CBN had put in place a three-year plan to revitalise the Nigerian Security and Printing Mint to enable it become one of the top 10 in the world.
According to him, at the end of the exercise, the enormous capacities of the Mint would be made to impact on the entire economy.
�Jobs would be created, banks would no longer print their currencies outside and this would save the nation huge foreign forex,� he said.
Soludo added that the CBN had been the life- wire of the Mint On the N25 billion minimum capitalisation by banks, Soludo reiterated that the it would give banks capacity to perform better.
According to him, the situation among many banks is that where one customer borrows N200 million from a bank, the bank starts going under.
�That should not be the ideal situation. �What we are saying is that even though capitalisation is not the only thing we require, you need to have the capacity. This will make the banks have the financial muscle to perform,� the CBN boss said.
