AfricaPress-Tanzania: DCB Commercial Bank board of directors has approved a dividend of 5.40/-per share during the 18th Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Dar es Salaam over the weekend.
The outgoing DCB Board Chairman Prof Lucian Msambichaka said in an online meeting that the dividend was based on a net profit of 2.038bn/-after taxation as of December 31, 2019 with about 500m/-being used to pay the dividends.
He further stated that the board had decided to pay the dividends despite the benefits they received based on a variety of factors including the prevailing commercial situation in the country which was largely affected by the Covid-19 outbreak.
“Another important factor that contributed to providing these dividends is to use the profits to enable the bank to continue to capitalise and continue to work effectively with vivid profit,” said Msambichaka.
“The success of DCB is largely attributed to the significant contribution from our bank shareholders because until 2018 when our bank made a profit of 995m/-our shareholders were determined to use the profit to consolidate capital rather than sharing the profit,” he added.
Addressing the shareholders, DCB Managing Director, Godfrey Ndalahwa said the bank has continued to improve capital while confidently fulfilling all resolutions reached at last year’s shareholders meeting.
He said one of the resolutions of the general meeting was for the bank to expand its base and have agents in Dar es Salaam and in the regions while another resolution was to cut down non-performing loans.
“We have taken up all that and now we have agents across the country and five small service centers and eight branches while doing well in cutting down non-performing loans by taking a number of measures including strengthening the defaulted loans collection unit and managing debt collection agencies and putting in place good credit practices” he said.
He said from the initiatives the bank have reduced NPLs by 19 percent in 2018 to 14 percent in 2019 and have also reduced the loans imbalance from payable loans to NPLs from 2.6 per cent to 0.3 percent in 2019 and continue to ensure that repayments are guaranteed to be repaid.
Commenting on the financial performance, DCB’s Acting Director of Finance, Ester Bgoya said one of the factors contributing to the bank’s success was the reduction in last year’s operating costs from 17bn/-to 15.8bn/-due to controlling of unnecessary expenditure and operations through technology.
“Although we have had a credit increase in 2019 interest rates earnings declined from 15.7bn/- to 12.5bn/-due to the decline in loan interest rates as bank’s targets to reduce rates and provide cheaper loans,” said Ms Ester.
