01 Mar 2018

First National Bank Botswana (FNBB) has announced a nine per cent growth of profits before tax for their just ended financial year in December 2017.

Announcing their financial results and share dividends for the past six months in Gaborone recently, FNBB indicated that they had made profits before tax of P450 million compared to P400 million from 2016.

FNBB chief executive officer, Mr Steven Bogatsu said despite Botswana’s tough trading period for banking in the last four years with the closure of BCL mine and generally the sluggish economy due to unforeseen increase in inflation rates caused by the rise of fuel prices, policy uncertainties which usually restricted employment, FNBB managed to show growth in its profits,

However, he said the growth was contributed by the bank’s retail advances of transactional accounts, personal loans and debit/credit cards as well as the banks caution on lending and focusing on recoveries and operational efficiencies such as technology adoption/digital migration.

Mr Bogatsu explained that growth of Botswana’s economy was in dire need to be improved to boost policies such as monetary policy and NDP11 as well as business regulation policies involving permits as well as growth in diversification needed to be improved to ease the trade of banking in Botswana.

Meanwhile, FNBB also showed a growth in technology adoption from its clients of 95 per cent thus far leaving a five per cent clients still going to the banks to make transactions.

“Digital migration has encouraged FNBB to have a wider self-service such as cellphone and online banking which has immensely grown,” Mr Bogatsu stated.
Meanwhile, the bank’s chief finance officer, Mr Makgau Dibakwane stated that FNBB’s dividend share price had not indicated any growth and still remained at P0.50 per share from 2016. Ends