SMIB planning Rs. 2800m loan portfolio

Anjana Samarasinghe

EXPANSION OF SERVICES: The State Mortgage and Investment Bank (SMIB) is planning to provide Rs 2800 million in loans this year.

They also expect to expand their services into micro financing this year. This was revealed when Minister of State Revenue and Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya visited the SMIB last Monday.

The Chairman of SMIB, Chandima Weerakkody said, that this year they have planned to venture out to the micro financing segment and this will be a joint operation with the Industrial Development Board (IDB). 'IDB will assist us in identifying ideal small and micro scale industrialists,' he said.

The Chairman also said that now they are negotiating with some real estate developers to finance large scale housing projects. There were a lot of inquiries from the real estate developers for providing funds for their projects, he said.

The SMIB is targetting to expand their branch network in areas such as Nugegoda and Kadawatha. They are also targetting Badulla and Hatton to facilitate estate workers in obtaining housing loans. Revealing the progress of the Bank to the Minister, Weerakkody said that they were able to reduce the Non Performing Loan (NPL) rate from 30.5% in 2005 to 19.5% in 2006.

This was mainly due to the strong recovery program carried out by the Bank staff. Each staff member was given a certain number of NPL to take care of and they encouraged these borrowers to repay their loans. This year we are trying to reduce our NPL rate to one digit number, he said. The Bank has provided 11,104 loans to the value of Rs 2,643 million last year and in 2005 it was Rs 1,849 million.

In 2006 the bank had a Rs. 1,424 million increase in revenue and in 2005 it was Rs 1,240 million. Increase in deposits was Rs 5,663 million last year and in 2005 it was Rs 4,690 million.