Sri Lanka's Commercial Bank of Ceylon said profits before tax drop marginally to 6.474 billion in the first half of 2014 due to imposition of Nation building tax from January.
The bank says the profit before financial VAT and NBT was up 1.92 percent to 7.587 billion rupees.
The imposition of Nation Building Tax (NBT) from 1st of January 2014 resulted in the Bank’s NBT for the six months amounting to 159 million rupees. Financial VAT and NBT together totalled 1.113 billion rupees for the first half 2014, an increase of 18.88 percent.
“These factors contributed to the marginal drop in the profit before tax of Rs 6.474 billion for the period under review,” The bank said in a media release.
The bank recorded 4,479 billion rupees of profit after tax.
In the first half of 2014, net interest income rose 10 percent to 13.133 billion rupees, interest expenses fell in absolute terms by 5.13 percent to 17.301 billion rupee compared to the corresponding period last year.
Loans and receivables up 4.46 percent to 438 billion rupees by end June from December 2013.
The total operating income of the bank rose 9.39 percent to 17,698 billion rupees in the six months of 2014.
The bank’s total assets reached 683.579 billion rupees up from 22.48 percent over corresponding period of 2013 and shows 12.69 percent increase from December 2013.
Commercial Bank’s CEO Jegan Durairatnam was quoted saying that the bank had adopted a more robust mechanism in provisioning for individual impairment aimed at improving the provision cover.
Total deposits grew by 8.21 percent over the six months at an average of more than 6.4 billion rupees a month, to 503.563 billion rupees as at June 30, 2014. Deposit growth over the corresponding period of last year was 74 billion rupees.
Commercial Bank 1st half performance
4/
5
Oleh
Lanka Stocks
