Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. DIVERSIFIED financial services group, ZIMRE Holdings Limited has commended authorities for enacting timely measures which have gone a long way to ease inflation pressures in the economy on the back of the group’s realization of a 54% profit growth.
Presenting the group’s performance for the half year period ended June 30 2023, ZIMRE chairman, Desmond Matete said while the Zimbabwean economic and business operating environment in the first half to 30 June 2023 was fraught with challenges, interventions by monetary authorities managed to ease the pressures.
“Key amongst the challenges was the increase in inflationary pressures and exchange rate volatility.
“Fortunately, after interventions from the fiscal and monetary authorities in June 2023, the economy experienced some stabilisation on these aspects resulting in the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) reforecasting the country’s economic growth for 2023 from 2.83% to 5.3%,” he said.
The remarks come at a time when annual inflation rate tumbled to 18,36% in the month of September 2023 following the move by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency to adopt a calculation method which captures in price movements based on the dual impact currency impact of the dominant currency.
Accordingly, official market trends confirm that 80% of the local transactions are undertaken in the US$ currency.
Meanwhile during the period, the group’s total income decreased by 25% from ZWL141,2 billion to ZWL105,8 billion in inflation-adjusted terms.
There was notable growth in historical cost terms of 718% from ZWL21.5 billion to ZWL175.9 billion in the current period anchored by core business growth in the reinsurance and life and pensions businesses as well as fair value gains on foreign currency denominated assets.
“The group recorded steady growth in pro‐t for the period with an increase of 54% to ZWL167.6 billion recorded in the current period in inflation adjusted terms and a 671% growth under historical cost terms to ZWL155.8 billion.
“The positive growth in profitability is largely driven by foreign exchange gains on US$ denominated net monetary assets and revaluation gains on investment properties,” said Matete.
Going forward, the group maintains its strategic focus on growing and invigorating its core businesses as it continues to build on a rich 40-year legacy.
The group aims to harvest its insurance value chain and broaden its ecosystem through Group synergies and various partnerships locally and across the African continent.
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