Rwanda Commercial Bank (BCR) registered huge growth in net earnings in quarter two of this year, signalling a major turn around in one of the country’s largest lenders previously marred by a series of poor risk management practises stretching from 2007 to 2009.

The bank announced that net profits rose by 35.2 per cent to Rwf1.3b between April and June this year, up from Rwf961.3m at the same period last year as it increased its lending to the economy, mainly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

"We expect the bank to have great results this year as our corporate SMEs, retail clients are doing very well,” BCR’s Managing Director, Sanjeev Anand, said in an interview with Business Times.

The subsidiary of UK’s private equity investor, Actis, targets a net profit of Rwf2.6b by the end of this year.

The Bank said that its loan book stands at Rwf35b as of June 30, while the balance sheet expanded to Rwf33b from Rwf28.4b as December 2010.

Anand further explained that BCR will achieve the target by introducing new products on the market which include home loans and mortgage products.

"Our loan book is growing, we are planning to introduce new products on the electronic banking platform and also re-launch retail banking and also increase initiative on SME portfolio,” Anand said.

BCR’s Non Performing Loan (NPL) has gone down by 12 percentage points from 25.5 percent in 2009 to 13.05 percent as end of June this year, he said.

Actis plans to exit the Rwandan market by selling its shares in BCR.

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