Marginal decrease in PAT

DROP: The profit after tax of the DFCC group attributable to shareholders was Rs. 1,586 million compared to Rs. 1,690 million the previous financial year, which is a marginal decrease of 2.6 per cent, the DFCC annual report revealed.

Correspondingly return on average assets and the return on average equity of the Group decreased from the previous year’s 3.3 per cent to 2.6 per cent and 15.5 per cent to 13.1 per cent respectively.

This decline is primarily due to higher levels of taxation and offsets the superior performance, in terms of operational gains and core business growth, of DFCC Bank and its 95 per cent owned subsidiary, DFCC Vardhana Bank Limited.

According to the annual report the performance of the Group would have been significantly higher if not for the non- recurrent pension restructure cost of Rs 1,654 million incurred by Commercial Bank of Ceylon Limited, an associate company.

Since the financial services VAT is based on the accounting profit, the pension restructure cost net of financial services VAT was Rs 1,378 million.