ADDIS ABABA – The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) has recorded close to 13 billion birr profit from its operations over the last six months, showing a 15.6% year-on-year growth.
The state-owned financial giant started the 2022/23 Ethiopian fiscal year with a plan to secure 12.65 Billion Birr from the first two quarters.
The bank secured 12.96 billion profit, attaining 102.4% of the target, CBE President Abie Sano told a press briefing on Thursday. The half-year performance report also put CBE’s total revenues at 58.7 billion Birr.
CBE Surpasses Forex Target
The bank managed to surpass its foreign currency earnings target.
More than 1.7 billion US dollars has been obtained from various sources in the first half of the financial year, said Abie, achieving 111% success rate.
“The total earnings have shown a much better improvement from the $1.3 Billion forex secured in the same period last year,” Abie noted.
Conversely, the forex provision did not show a significant increase from the same months last year.
“We have made more than 3.8 billion US Dollars payments for imports including fuel, fertilizers, medicines, and other commodities necessary for the country,” Abie said.
The government takes a bigger share of the forex payments than the private sector. This is mostly due to the increase in prices of fertilizers and fuel in the global market, he added.
Abie: Deposit to Exceed A trillion Mark
The six-month period saw CBE’s total loans and advances jump from 938 billion to 976 billion Birr.
This comes after 63.3 billion birr fresh loans were disbursed and 53.8 billion birr previously given loans were repossessed in the period.
The bank’s total deposit also reached 978.8 billion Birr after 88.7 billion birr deposit was made in the first half of the financial year, beginning in July.
“The amount is 14 percent higher than our six-month target,” said the president of the bank which attracted at least 2.2 million new customers who opened savings account holders/
“The total deposit is nearing a trillion mark,” he continued. “We expect to reach the milestone in the coming two weeks.”
Booming digital Banking services
The bank’s top performance, however, was recorded in its digital banking services which saw both the number of its customers and transactions grow significantly.
The number of ATM service active users grew by 2.3 million to 8.7 million while CBE mobile banking service active customers increased by 3.2 million and reached 7.9 million. These customers made 365.6 million transactions in the six-month period, up by 105% from last year’s 179 million.
The cumulative value of the transactions has also more than doubled from the total amount recorded last year. Abie said more than 1.3 trillion birr worth of transactions were made through the bank’s various digital payment services.
This has shown a 233% growth from transactions made in the same months last year which were valued at 386.4 billion Birr.
“This performance shows how digitizing the public has become and that the country is on track in making the digital Ethiopia vision a reality,” Abie said.
The figure makes up 39.3 percent of the total transactions, the president of the bank.
Established in 1942 with a capital of one million Maria Theresa thaler (MTT) and two branches in Addis Ababa, the bank with 60 Billion Birr paid-up capital currently has a network of 1,879 branches and 70, 000 employees, serving 38 million customers.
CBE’s total asset value has now reached 1.23 trillion, maintaining its position as the richest entity in Ethiopia.
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