Absa Bank Uganda has released its financial results for the year ended December 2021 in which it indicated that its profits grew by 169% to see the bank get a shs110 billion profit after tax.
According to the bank Managing Director, Mumba Kalifungwa, the bank also delivered a 15.4% growth in revenue to shs365 billion which indicated a shs49 billion, customer gross loans stood at shs1.437 trillion and the total balance sheet grew by 13.1% to shs4 trillion.
He noted that apart from growth in revenues, the bank also achieved growth in assets, equity and customer deposits, and this he said means the bank is well positioned going forward.
To this, the bank’s customer deposits grew by 2.7% to 2.421 trillion, maintaining a 10.6% cumulative annual growth rate for the third year running.
There was also a 21.6% rise in total equity from 2020.
“We managed to grow our customer deposits despite a challenging year reflecting increased customer trust in the Absa brand. Our position in the market is stronger and we are even more well poised to support economic growth across all key sectors as the economy expands. We are well capitalized with our total capital ratio at 24.3%, well above the 15% regulatory limit,” Mumba noted.
He attributed this good performance to a number of factors that he said played the bank’s way.
“Because the economy grew by 6% according to the Central Bank last year, it contributed to our performance. Inflation remained under 5% as there was no general increase in prices of good. As guided by the BoU, we provided credit relief to support our clients in distressed sectors like tourism and education,” Mumba said.
He said the bank also provided credit to a number of sectors that provide growth to the economy including manufacturing, construction, agriculture and trade.
To this, Absa Bank Uganda officials said they gave out loans worth over shs1 trillion to different sectors.
According to Michael Segwaya the Absa Uganda Executive Director but also Chief Finance Officer, the bank’s different channeled like online banking and new ATM services were appreciated by customers leading to increased deposits.
He added that the reopening of the economy saw increased activity, especially among traders and this , he said also contributed to the bank’s perfect performance in the year 2021.
“Because of reopening of the economy, the country resumed ordering goods from abroad. Demand also started going up due to the reopening of the economy. In general, we realized an increase in the number of transactions,”Segwaya said.
He however noted that the bank intends to continue to leveraging digital technology to deliver seamless customer experiences and drive business growth as innovation remains key to the realization of its ambition to be a digitally led bank.
“We remain cautiously optimistic in our outlook for 2022. Full reopening bodes well for economic rebound and monetary policy remains supportive of the recovery of the economy.”
Future
Going forward, the officials from Absa Uganda noted that the Russia-Ukraine war is expected to have a big impact on the performance of this year with increased prices of several items like fuel and wheat products as well as disruption in the supply chains.
