Africa-Press – Uganda. Stanbic Bank has registered an increase in profits, capping the half year with Shs154.9b in profits, which represents a 21.5 per cent growth. This was a growth from Shs127.4b that the bank posted during the same period last year.
This was mainly driven by strong growth in trade revenue, which accounted for Shs37.5b as well as better management of loan impairments, which reduced by Shs11.7b compared to the same period last year. Ms Ann Juuko, the Stanbic Bank chief executive officer, said at the weekend that the positive growth had also been supported by the growth in digital transaction systems, which the bank has recently anchored its operations around.
“We have moved customers from manual to the digital space with more than 80 per cent of transactions happening in the digital space,” she said. The performance comes amid a number of Covid-19 related challenged that have since March disrupted the businesses environment. However, amid the challenges, Ms Juuko said, the bank had “seen significant growth in our small and medium enterprises segment as we continued to support them through this challenging period”. Overall, she said, through a number of financing channels, the bank had boosted private sector growth with loans and advances growing by 9.8 per cent to Shs3.8 trillion from Shs3.4 trillion in June 2020.
The bank had also engaged deliberate intervention to drive economic recovery through creation of the Enterprise Economic Restart Fund, which had sought to raise and provide up to Shs350b capital in low-cost financing. Ms Juuko also noted that over and above, given the current macro-economic environment, inflation is expected to remain at 2.2 per cent.
