Ethiopia’s largest commercial bank reported a record high 25.6 billion Birr annual profit before tax from its operations during the June-ended 2023/24 fiscal year.
President of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) Abie Sano announced the performance on Friday, saying the profit recorded in the year is the highest in the bank’s history.
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The bank also put its annual revenue at 135.4 billion Birr ($2.1 billion), showing a 13 percent increase from the preceding year.
President Abie attributed the record-breaking performance to cost saving and reform strategies implemented during the fiscal year.
These strategies helped the bank to bring its nonperforming loans down to 2.3 percent at the end of the budget year, according to CBE.
At the same period, the bank disbursed fresh loans and advances worth 218 billion birr – of which 91 percent or 198 billion birr were given to the private sector.
Per report, the bank’s total deposits also increased to 1.17 trillion birr in the year that saw the number of CBE customers surpassed the 45 million mark.
These customers made 1.56 billion transactions worth 31.6 trillion birr in the 12-month period. The 1.9 billion or 72 percent of the total transactions were made through CBE’s digital payment services.
The State-owned bank also faced many challenges including a system glitch that let customers to transact more than their total balance.
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Abie said the bank recoup 99.5 percent of the 801.4 million Birr withdrawn or transferred to other banks during the glitch that lasted for hours. Efforts to retrieve the remaining 4.76 million birr is still ongoing, he added.
