Sanasa doubles 2009 profits

Records impressive results:

Ramani Kangaraarachchi

SANASA Development Bank (SDBL) has recorded an impressive growth of 96 percent in 2009.

SDBL CEO General Manager Nimal J.B. Mamaduwa told the Daily News Business the bank has earned a pre tax profit of Rs 593 million compared to Rs 303 million in 2008.

The post-tax profit for the year ending December 31, 2009 was Rs 208 million as against Rs 97 million in the previous year having shown a 115 percent growth.

The provision on VAT was Rs 147 million whilst income tax provision had been made at Rs 237 million, he said. “Given the external conditions, we were compelled to decrease the pace of our branch expansion plans eventhough, we did penetrate into some very key areas that have seen immediate success upon our presence. We expanded our branch network by eight this year,” Mamaduwa said.

The net interest income has shown a growth of 54 percent whilst operating expenses has increased by 28 percent.

Mamaduwa said credit growth compared to industry average which has shown negative growth has been similar for SDBL as well, although the second half of the year saw us maintain a fairly reasonable growth paradigm of 24 percent.

The bank has been able to maintain NPL ratio at 6.1 percent as against 6.5 percent in 2008, which is well over the industry average. The bottom up approach of development espouse prompts to concentrate considerably on building our savings deposit base, which over the years has seen consistent growth.

The building of partnerships therefore eventually impacted positively on deposit base, growing by 32 percent, from Rs 8.2 billion to Rs 10.8 billion.