Nations Trust Bank Group on Wednesday announced that post-tax profit grew by 17% to Rs. 593.119 million for the 2008 (calendar) financial year against Rs. 504.818 million in 2007, reflecting a strong performance during ‘what was clearly a challenging year for the Bank.’
Gross income of the Group grew by 49%, with Net Interest Income growing by 38% and Non Funds Based Income in the form of Fees, Commissions and Foreign Exchange Income showing a very healthy growth of 34%.
The Bank, in a statement said, Deposits grew by 19% to Rs. 34.146 billion from Rs. 28.665 billion while Advances grew by 16% to Rs. 39.940 billion.
According to the statement, Zulfiqar Zavahir, NTB’s Director/CEO, in his review has said that the banking industry was not immune to the effects of the market turmoil and economic slowdown experienced during the year. “Credit quality continued to suffer resulting in increased credit losses and higher non-performing assets (NPA) ratios across the banking industry. Gross NPA ratio of the Bank deteriorated to 5.98% as at 31st December 2008 from 4.96% a year before but compares well against an industry average of 6.2%.
Provisions for credit losses too increased by 117% to Rs. 470.9 million, contributed to by the repayment difficulties faced by some segments of our consumer assets portfolio of Credit Cards and Loans and to prudential provisions made on account of several corporate customer exposures over and above the provisioning policy of the Bank, which is more stringent than the guidelines of the Central Bank,” he said. |
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