Updated 3:17 PM ET March 5, 1998
EMU, 2000 Bug Cannot Be Tackled Together-UK
Banks
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's banks will not be able to prepare
for a switch to a single European currency at the same time as
they work to prevent a rash of damaging computer crashes on
January 1, 2000, the British Bankers' Association said.
"In terms of the U.K., you could not do the two together,"
director-general Tim Sweeney told an inquiry by parliament's
science and technology committee on the so-called millennium
bug problem.
Sweeney said the banks had already appealed to the government
to avoid legislation or regulations which would require a heavy
diversion of information technology staff away from dealing with
the bug.
"If we have to divert resources...we are in trouble," he said.
Many computers are in danger of going down as the new
millennium dawns because they recognize year dates only by the
last two digits and will be confused by a year which does not
begin with the digits 19.
Sweeney said the cost to Britain's banks of tackling this problem
would be $1.65 billion.
He said he was confident that new "millennium compliant"
computers would be installed in the banks in time.
If action was not taken, most British salaries and pensions would
go unpaid, standing order payments for regular services would
lapse, and businesses would go bust because payments were not
received, the association said in earlier written evidence to the
committee.
The British government has already said it does not plan a
referendum on possible membership of the single currency until
after the next general election, which could be two and a half
years into the new millennium.
Sweeney was asked whether, if British banks could not prepare
for the single currency at the same time as solving the millennium
bug problem, banks in the 11 EU states which plan to start
adopting the Euro currency from January 1 next year would be
able to do so.
He said his association had been told that they could as they had
a longer planning time for the Euro than his members would have
if Britain suddenly decided to join the "first wave" of membership.
"That may be so. I don't know the answer to that," he said. |
