Afram Rural Bank supports community

The Afram Plains Rural Bank at Tease in the Kwahu South District has constructed a mechanized borehole costing GHC 21,000.00 to provide portable water for the people of Tease as part of its corporate social responsibility.

The Bank had also set aside GHC 8,000.00 to award scholarships to brilliant but needy students of the St Fidelis Senior High School also at Tease. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank, Mr Emmanuel Siaw, said this at the 30th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Bank at Tease.

He said the Bank had also constructed a one-storey building and provided computers worth GHC 39,000.00 at its headquarters at Tease.

The bank made a profit of GHC 154,083.00 before tax last year as against GHC 138,150.00 in 2011, showing an increase of 10.89 percent. It spent GHC 13,000.00 to pay dividend of 0.30 pessewas per share to its shareholders.

Mr Siaw said the total deposit of the bank also went up from GHC 3,156,106 in 2011, to GHC 4,893,905 in the year under review, an increase of 39.19 percent. Total assets of the bank increased by 37.32 percent thus from GHC 6,190,059 in 2011 to GHC 8,500,214 cedis in 2012.

Cash and short term funds went up from GHC 493,269 in 2011 to GHC 1,071,803 in 2012, representing an increase of 117.29 percent whiles the bank’s share capital increased by 22.98 percent last year. Loans and advances also increased from GHC 3,450,235 in 2011 to GHC 4,361,484 in 2012, an increase of 26.14 percent.

In an address read on his behalf, the Managing Director of the ARB Apex Bank, Mr Kwadwo Ayeh Kusi, urged the bank to put in place effective risk management policy including awareness and recognition of risk to enable them mitigate threats of vulnerability.

He appealed to the bank to evolve strategies to identify, assess and control operations including credits to strengthen the banks internal control systems. Mr Kusi urged rural banks to commit a reasonable share of expenses to training and capacity building of staff to deliver efficient services.

The Kwahu Afram Plains South District Chief Executive, Mr Ibrahim Issakar, commended the bank for its impressive performance and urged shareholders and the public to continue to do business with it rather than with the mushroom microfinance institutions that are not credible.