By After reducing its staff by a quarter, the Bank of Lithuania will function more efficiently
The Bank of Lithuania starts the year 2013 having created a new structure with four specialised services devised to perform its main functions and one internal services service as the basis for it. After the restructuring, the number of staff declined substantially, thus the Bank of Lithuania performs the functions provided in the Law on the Bank of Lithuania more efficiently.
"At the Bank of Lithuania the number of heads at different levels has nearly halved, many independent divisions have been eliminated, cash handling has been reorganised. Having thus streamlined our activities, we have the possibility to reduce costs in spite of the fact that last year we took over functions that are new to the Bank of Lithuania-financial services and markets supervision, settling of consumer disputes," says the Chairman of the Bank of Lithuania, Vitas Vasiliauskas.
During the restructuring, which lasted a little longer than a year, heads at the Bank of Lithuania, at different levels, were cut from 165 to 87. Total staff has declined by nearly a fourth, from 794 to 599. Since early 2012, supervision of the entire financial market has been consolidated at the Bank of Lithuania; 58 staff from the liquidated Securities Commission and the Insurance Supervisory Commission have been employed here. Without them, staff redundancy at the Bank of Lithuania would exceed 30 per cent.
The Bank of Lithuania's staff maintenance costs for 2013 will be nearly LTL 4 million lower than those allocated before the restructuring, and more than LTL 9 million lower than the staff maintenance costs of all three institutions (Bank of Lithuania, Securities Commission and Insurance Supervisory Commission) in 2011.
According to V. Vasiliauskas, based on the best practices of European central bank management, the restructuring was aimed at enhancing the performance of the Bank's main functions. Therefore, the ratio between the staff performing support functions (IT, finance management, physical security, etc.) and the main functions, which, before the changes, had been accordingly 67 to 33 per cent, currently is 50 to 50 per cent.
During the restructuring, taking into account global tendencies and economic as well as financial challenges, the Financial Stability Department was established at the Bank of Lithuania, which became an integral part of the Economics and Financial Stability Service (previously, only the Financial Stability Division functioned).
The new structure of the Banking Service, which is now responsible for the investment of foreign reserve assets and payments, was very well evaluated by World Bank experts.
Having reorganised the structure of cash handling, instead of several individual units the Cash Service was established, which performs cash handling on a centralised basis; the Bank of Lithuania branch in Klaip
