Citizen's Bank assets grow from $15.8B to $17.7B
… records 10 th consecutive year of profits - Chairman Reis
Kaieteur News
January 19, 2007
After 12 years of operation, 2006 marked the 10 th year of profit increases for Citizen's Bank. This report comes from the Managing Director, Allan Parris, despite the many challenges that the financial institution faced, including the loss of income from the non-refund of government bonds.
The bonds which matured on May 17, 2006, had accounted for 37.7 per cent of the total investments.
“The net profit for Citizen's Bank after taxation for 2006,” he said, “was $347.3 million as compared to $345.5 million in 2005.”
The 2006 annual report states that the financial institution continued to grow and prosper…as assets grew - from $15.8 billion in 2005 to $17.7 billion in 2006.
“After transfer to statutory reserve and dividend, the profit for the year was $235.7 million as compared to $231.9 million for 2005, Mr. Parris reported.
On the subject of income from loans and advances and investments, Mr. Parris reported that Interest Income was $1.1M for the year, representing a 13.65 per cent increase over 2005.
Non-interest expenses, he said, were $501.6M for the year, “a 10.89 per cent increase on the previous year.”
The future
Commenting on the bank's future, Mr. Parris said that the institution will continue to enhance the quality of human resources as well as the facilities and expand the product line with new services to better meet the needs of the customers.
“We will continue to strengthen our activities in risk management to better manage and reduce market, credit and operational risks.”
Giving an economic review Chairman Clifford Reis reported that the economic environment in 2006 offered mixed results.
“Indications are that real economic growth will continue at a modest rate mainly because of strong growth in the engineering and construction, and services sectors.”
Performance of the bank
Reis reports that the net income for year 2006 was $883.7M, representing a 3.2 per cent increase.
Credit quality has been good and it keeps getting better, he said.
“Our non-performing assets were $221.4M at year-end, down 23.53 per cent from $289.4M in 2005. The bank's reserves for loan losses were $89.4M at September 30, 2006, which was 1.24 per cent of year-end loans and 40.27per cent of total non-performing loans.
2007 optimism
Reis said that optimism is high for Guyana 's economic development. However, the greatest threats to economic performance continue to be the crime situation in the country and the external/internal shocks which could undermine macro-economic management, productive efforts and business and consumer confidence.