Agona Rural Bank declares C424.9mn cedis profit

Agona Kwanyako, C/R, Oct 4, GNA - The Agona Rural Bank with its headquarters at Agona Kwanyako in the Central Region recorded a pre tax profit of 424.97 million cedis compared to 274.8 million cedis last year.

Mr Ben Donkoh, Chairman of the Board of Directors, who announced this at the 20th Annual General Meeting of shareholders at Kwanyako, said the total income of the bank rose to 1.522 billion cedis as against 895.40 million cedis. He said the total expenditure was 1.097 billion cedis as against 801.58 million cedis, an increase of 37 percent. Mr Donkoh said the total deposit balance at the close of the year stood at 5.12 billion cedis as against 3.59 billion cedis, an increase of 42.8 percent.


With the increase in deposit base, the bank increased its short-term investments from 3.02 billion cedis in 2002 to 4.78 billion cedis in 2003,while the bank granted loans and advances totalling 801 million cedis, Mr Donkoh said. The Board Chairman stressed that loan repayment was encouraging and expressed the hope that they would keep it up and urged loan defaulters especially women groups to repay for others to benefit. Mr Donkoh noted that the bank would re-launch its "Agyenkwa Susu" scheme with modification to satisfy customers' requirements and to increase the mobilisation capacity.

Mr Emmanuel Kwarpong, Managing Director of ARB Apex Bank, in speech read on his behalf urged the rural and community banks to step up their share mobilization efforts to make them stronger. He appealed to shareholders and citizens of the area to acquire more shares to increase its capital Mr Kwarpong said ARB Apex bank was leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that all rural banks performed satisfactorily.


The Managing Director assured the Directors, Management, staff and shareholders that rural banking system would be transformed to meet the financial sector requirements. He announced that ARB Apex Bank had procured a banking applications software to be installed in rural banks to ensure uniformity in their operation. Mr Kwarpong commended the Directors, Management and Staff for the progress in the past years.