KAMPALA, April 4 (Reuters) – Stanbic Bank Uganda
increased lending to customers and kept costs under control,
allowing it to post an 84 percent jump in pretax profit for its
full year 2011, it said on Wednesday.
Ranked as the country’s biggest commercial bank and
controlled by South Africa’s Standard Bank, Stanbic
made a pretax profit of 163.8 billion shillings ($65.4 mln), up
from 88.7 billion shillings in 2010.
“Our operating income climbed 31 percent while our operating
expenses increased by only 2 percent so we really managed to
control our costs,” said Arthur Oginga, the bank’s finance
director.
Interest from loans and advances jumped to 266.7 billion
shillings from 158 billion shillings in the previous year on the
back of a 28 percent increase in the loan book, the bank said.
The bank achieved growth in lending in the face of high
interest rates after the central bank ramped up its key lending
rate in the second half of last year to tame rampant inflation,
which hit an 18-year high of over 30 percent in October.
The bank raised its Central Bank Rate (CBR) from 13 percent
when it was launched in July to a peak of percent in December.
The rate stands at 21 percent after two cuts earlier this year.
($1 = 2505.0000 Ugandan shillings)
(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Writing by Duncan Miriri;
Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)
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