The National Microfinance Bank (NMB) has once again achieved fairly impressive financial results with stronger top line growth and higher balance sheet growth of 18 per cent to reach total assets of 4.5tri/-.
NMB Chief Finance Officer, Waziri Barnabas, said during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) held in Dar es Salaam at the weekend that the bank’s efficiency ratios outperformed the market in 2015, with operating cost to income ratio being at 57 per cent versus 63 per cent.
Similarly, the bank’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio at 2 per cent lower than previous year by 1 per cent and against the market at 8 per cent.
Loans and advances were up by 24 per cent to 2.4tri/- while customer deposits were up by 19 per cent to 3.6tri/-.
Food and Agribusiness continues to be a significant part of NMB’s business, providing input finance to hundreds of agricultural marketing cooperative societies (AMCOS), financing emerging and commercial farmers, and supporting processors and traders of agricultural commodities’ value chain with their trade finance, foreign exchange and investment needs.
During the period under review, Organic Interest income grew by per cent to 438bn/- compared to 417bn/- of the previous year while the organic non funded income posted 18 per cent growth to 170bn/- from 144bn/-.
“The increase in cost of funding and high exchange rates, reduced profit after tax to 150bn/-being 4 per cent slightly below last year’s of 155bn/-, however, operating income maintained at the same growth levels as last year at 472bn/-,” he said.
He added that NMB has continued to provide transactional, savings and investment and lending solutions to its growing customer segments including Personal Banking, micro, small and medium enterprises, Food and Agribusiness, Large Corporate and government.
Currently, NMB has at least 2.1 million customers, which means that about 40 per cent of all Tanzanians who have a bank account actually hold an account at NMB. The bank also finances a rapidly growing SME segment with over 60,000 customers.
NMB with network of over 175 branches continues to be the dominant network among banks in the country, fulfilling a key role in empowering local communities, thus having significant but often forgotten economic impact, especially in those previously unbanked communities and districts.
This extensive network coverage covers 95 per cent of districts in Tanzania of which a total of 110 of these branches are in rural and 65 are in urban areas
Source: AllAfrica
