CBN Eases Power Problems, Plans IPP

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is working towards establishing an Independent Power Project (IPP) for power supply to all banks in a bid to reduce banks’ present huge dependence on power generating sets, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek has learnt.
The country’s public power supply has been notoriously unreliable with companies and individuals depending largely on alternative power sources while public power supply has become a standby.
Because of dependence on alternative sources, costs of doing business in the country have escalated and companies in the bid to remain afloat have passed the burden to the final consumers.
But for the banks, the CBN is planning a breather part of a shared services project in collaboration with banks aimed at centralizing back offices and the industrialization of common processes, given the criticality of efficiency to cost of funds.
The overhead cost of banks is expected to be reduced by 30 percent in the next three years, through the various initiatives spearheaded by the CBN.
According to Mallam Lamido Sanusi, the CBN governor, “all these initiatives would lead to drastic reduction of overhead costs and ultimately reflect positively on the cost of funds”.
Sanusi called for the establishment of special courts that would promptly handle cases of loan defaults, credit fraud and insider abuses – related cases.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek gathered that the CBN is scaling through on a number of legislative reforms aimed at unlocking the bottlenecks to the smooth flow of credit to the real sector and especially to small and medium enterprises.
The federal government has so far expended N10bn on thermal power plants for distribution to substations and is working on other complementary measures to increase the megawatts