The Asset Management Company of Nigeria has disclosed that the Nationalized banks would begin to be sold by June 2014. CEO of AMCON, Mustapha Chike Obi made this known while speaking at the Hallmark Public Lecture Forum in Lagos yesterday.
He said, “There are many people interested in buying the banks and we would sell them as soon as the process is completed. We would make sure it is done properly, at least two of the will be sold this year. The first one in June and the next one would follow in October and Enterprise would come first before Mainstream. The Keystone bank would come third because there was a management change in the bank after a year and we need to give more time to correct the bank.”
Chike Obi decried the high level of employment in the country, saying that Nigeria with a population of 170 million people already had a backlog of jobs that needed creation.
“We are in a very critical period of the economy and things are getting much worst very fast, We are a country of about 170 million, growing at three and half per cent a year. There is a need to create between four to six million jobs for the people yearly. We have a backlog of unemployment people and five years from now, if this unemployment problem was not solved, it would amount to creating eight million jobs a year and if we fail, the society might not hold.
“We needed employment emergency in this country. We must create policies that would bring Nigerians in diaspora back to the country. The fiscal and monetary policies must gear towards growth. We must grow this country by 15 per cent a year for many years and create six million jobs year on year. There should be a better coordination of fiscal and monetary policy so that higher interest rate and loose fiscal policy will not kill a well planned project.”