The FINANCIAL — In the first ten months of the year, eleven new branches opened doors to clients and six more are expected to follow until the end of 2008, ProCredit Bank Georgia said last week. With 59 branches, ProCredit Bank will thus have the third largest branch network in the Georgian banking sector.
During this year, ProCredit Bank has already hired more than 500 new employees, bringing the total number of staff up to over 1,800. During the first three quarters of 2008, more than 30 managers from Georgia were able to participate in training courses held in the ProCredit management academies in Germany and Macedonia.
As of September 30, the bank’s gross loan portfolio reached USD 326 million, up USD 84 million since the beginning of the year. During the last weeks, the bank had meetings with all its borrowers whose businesses had been affected by the military conflict in August.
At the end of the third quarter, total deposits amounted to USD 191 million, up USD 18 million since the beginning of the year. In September, deposits grew by USD 10 million, returning one third of the customer funds withdrawn from the bank in August. In October the bank has reported a record number of 1,000 new accounts opened every day.
“This clearly demonstrates the confidence the population has in the institution, most probably further increased as a result of the fact that all customers who wanted to withdraw funds in August were able to do so without any restrictions or undue delays”, ProCredit Bank said.
As of September 30, 2008, the bank reported a year-to-date after-tax profit of USD 6.7 million, which is considerably above the budget and shows that there has not been any serious impact of the August events on the profitability of the institution.
“In the future ProCredit Bank will remain focused on lending to very small, small, and medium sized businesses, as the bank is convinced that these businesses will create a large number of jobs and make a vital contribution to the Georgian economy.“
“ProCredit Bank continues to develop rapidly in Georgia. Due to the bank’s strong financial position and above all, owing to the qualified staff we employ in Georgia, we are confident that we will be able to achieve our ambitious goals for the coming years. We believe in the future of Georgia and will go on with our investments as planned,” Stephan Boven, Chairperson of the Supervisory Board said.
ProCredit Bank has a B+ rating from the international agency Fitch Ratings, which is the best and highest possible rating in Georgia.
As of the third quarter of 2008 the banks assets totalled USD 432 million. Currently more than 220,000 clients enjoy the services of ProCredit Bank in Georgia.
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