ADDIS ABABA– Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) announced that it has secures 17.9 billion Birr in 2018/19 fiscal year. During the Bank’s 2018/19 performance evaluation forum held at African Union Conference Center yesterday, CBE President Bacha Ginna said that by implementing corporate strategy focusing on business development, business excellence and digitalization strategies, CBE is working to meet its goal of becoming internationally standard bank by 2025.
According to the President, 2018/19 was a successful year for the bank as it secures over 17.9 billion birr gross profit and the bank’s total asset has reached 712 billion Birr. He added that the bank’s reserved amount of capital raised from 451. billion to 541 billion birr in the fiscal year.
Meanwhile Bacha noted that the bank has provided 129 billion Birr loan in the fiscal year of which 22.2 billion was provided to private sector. The increasing provision of loan plays great role to increase the profit of the bank, he added.
He disclosed that the bank has collected 68 billion Birr from borrowers while the amount of bad debt has decreased from six billion Birr last year to 3.5 billion Birr during the fiscal year.
According to Bacha the bank has also earned USD 6.3 billion foreign currency, 268.7 from export, 3.9 billion from remittance and 2.1 billion from National Bank transfer. It has also provided USD six billion foreign currency to import items for various projects. 1.5 billion USD of the stated amount of forex was provided to the private sector, the President indicated.
Parallel with expanding its branches and modernizing its service, the bank gives due attention to expanding digital banking to promote mobile and internet banking. Accordingly the number of mobile banking users increased to 725 thousand and internet banking users to 14 thousand during the fiscal year.
CBE increased its branches to 1,444 including the 157 branches opened during the fiscal year. In addition to the branches at home CBE has also opened branches in Djibouti and South Sudan.
The customers’ of the bank reached over 21.6 million and have over 37,800 workers.
The Ethiopian Herald August 17/ 2019
BY DARGIE KAHSAY
