Amhara Bank, one of the youngest private banks in Ethiopia, bagged 237 million Birr in gross profit from its less than a month operations in the last 2021/22 fiscal Year.
The bank began providing financial services only days ahead of the conclusion of the financial year with a 4.8 billion Birr paid-up capital mobilized from 17,000 shareholders.
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Its Board of Directors chairman Melaku Fenta has noted that the bank’s initial steps involving 294 million Birr in expenditure brought positive results.
The bank opened 75 branches employing 1, 425 workers, allowing it registere at least 82, 000 customers with 401 million Birr deposits within eleven days.
In the same period, the bank also disbursed more than 6.5 Billion Birr loans to 400 borrowers.
“Overall, the bank obtained 534 million Birr in revenue from its eleven day long operations,” said Melaku, enabling it to secure 237 million Birr profit before tax.
Melaku presented the report to the shareholders of the bank that held its first ordinary and extraordinary General assembly on Thursday.
The chairman further told the shareholders that the Bank’s initial “encouraging performance” has continued well into the current fiscal year.
At the end of last week, the number of Amhara Bank customers and their total deposits reached 550,000 and 8.7 Billion Birr, respectively.
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The bank’s paid-up capital also increased from 4.8 Billion Birr to 5.3 Billion Birr, surpassing the central Bank’s minimum threshold of five billion Birr ahead of time.
Despite this milestone some older banks struggle to reach, Melaku told the shareholders that the bank has to continue raising its capital to remain competitive in the sector expected to be open up for foreign investors.
Currently, the Bank which officially opened its first branch on June 18 has more than 200 branches across Ethiopia.
