THE National Microfinance Bank (NMB), the country's largest bank in terms of profitability, has posted a staggering net profit of almost 100bn/- for its operations last year, mainly pushed up by net interest income.

The pro-poor bank, which has the widest network coverage of branches and ATMs, posted a net profit of 97.59bn/- at the end of December 2012, up from 71.84bn/- in 2011. The profit, which is the highest in the history of the bank, was mainly attributed to net interest income that generated 278.45bn/- last year against 185.17bn/- in 2011.

The revenue from loans proceeds was driven up by expansion of the loan portfolio, which grew to 1.35tr/- from 1.24tr/- of the previous year to push up loan to deposit ratio by almost 2.0 per cent to 60.52 per cent. While prudent lending seems to have helped the bank to lower its level of non-performing assets (loans) or NPLs to 2.36 per cent from 3.43 per cent.

The NPLs were down by almost 10bn/- to 32.7bn/-. In the last 12 months the bank increased seven new branches to bring the total number of branches to 147 across the country, hence push up NMB's total workforce by slightly over 5.0 per cent to 2,783 at end December.

The bank assets grew by 6.86 per cent to 2.79tr/- while customer deposits reached 2.27tr/- at the end of last year. NBM share price traded on Thursday at the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange (DSE) higher by almost 2.0 per cent to 1,160/- since the year began.

The profitability level pushed up earning per share (EPS) to 195/- from 144/-. In 2005, the bank was privatised and partly divested its shareholding 49 per cent to a consortium led by the Coˆperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank BA ('Rabobank Group'). In 2008, the government offloaded its 30 per cent shares to the general public in an initial public offer (IPO) and NMB staff.