The Milli Bank (the central bank) has signed an agreement on the printing and coinage of hard cash, in accordance with the re-denominated value.
Milli Bank chairman Elman Rustamov said that the corresponding contract had been awarded to Austrian company Osterreicheichische Banknoten und Sicherheitsduck. The Austrians have managed to overbid the most expected candidate вЂ" UK company Thomas De La Rue, which also promised to hire the British Royal Mint as a subcontractor.
“We have approved Austrians as they are available to both print money and mint coins. In addition, the Austrian company has enough capacity to develop the required design samples for coins. There are several reasons for our non-acceptance of Thomas De La Rue. First of all, at the stage of talks our consultant вЂ" the Swiss Central Bank вЂ" has supplied us with new standards, which are particularly linked to the conformity of bank notes and coins with the corresponding requirements, following the automation of the activity of the Treasury. As a result, Thomas De La Rue has faced with very exacting requirements, which were tougher than those applied to euro and were approaching to the standards for the printing and coining of Swiss francs.
The talks have revealed the unavailability of Thomas De La Rue to meet the requirements. At second, there has emerged another problem вЂ" compliance of money design with printing conditions. Thomas De La Rue has proposed to develop design samples for our hard cash, including coins, with the minting of coins to be provided by the Royal Mint.
Now everything is over, and we have a single company, which is capable of both developing the required design samples and print the money. Consequently, we will save about a million British pounds (1.8 million U.S. dollars) on the implementation of the project, following the reduction transportation charges,” Rustamov said.
The project envisions the delivery of about 800 tons of raw (metal stuff) to the country of operation of the contractor. The revised total cost of the project has been estimated at about 16 million euros (roughly 19.2 million U.S. dollars). “The original estimates have been approved at about 11.5 million British pounds (roughly 20.7 million U.S. dollars),” Rustamov explained.
The new bank notes and coins will be supplied to Azerbaijan by December, two month later than the originally agreed deadline. However, Rustamov thinks that the revised is “acceptable.” To the same point, so far the Milli Bank’s money committee has approved designs for only four bank notes with least face value.