An increased purchasing of treasury bills and government bonds has seen Barclays Bank’s profit grow by Sh. 100 million. The bank has posted a 7.5 per cent net profit growth in the first three months of the year.
The bank posted a net profit of Sh. 1.8 billion in the period compared to Sh. 1.7 billion it posted in the previous year.
Its investments in government bonds and Treasury bills grew by 52 per cent to stand at Sh. 67 billion. This helped raise total interest income 8.1 per cent to Sh. 6.9 billion.
Barclays’ interest income from lending to customers also went up despite a 1.8 per cent decline in lending to Sh. 165.5 billion.
The lender also benefited from a 25.7 per cent decline in loan loss provisions to Sh. 575.4 million despite gross defaults rising 7.8 per cent to Sh. 12.6 billion.
Barclays Bank ended the quarter in compliance with capital ratios even without factoring in boosters afforded by the Central Bank of Kenya’s directive allowing lenders to add expected credit loss provisions back to capital.
