Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) listed National Bank of Malawi (NBM) says it is optimistic that the positive trajectory recorded in some fundamentals of the economy will persist, a development that may influence a further growth of the business in 2017.<\/p>\n
This was said on Thursday in Blantyre during the bank\u2019s 45th Annual General Meeting (AGM) where it touted substantial business growth in the year ending 31st December 2016, despite a challenging operating environment.<\/p>\n
However, the country\u2019s biggest bank based on assets says the outlook remains murky as some prevalent economic challenges are yet to be addressed entirely.<\/p>\n
NBM outgoing chairperson Mathews Chikaonda told delegates to the AGM that while the operating environment in 2016 remained challenging, there is hope for an economic rebound this year.<\/p>\n
He said as improvements in the 2016\/17 season are expected to result into a rebound in Gross Domestic Product to 5.6 percent, there is also hope for an improved operating environment for businesses, especially those in the banking sector.<\/p>\n
He, however, cautioned over the prevalent high cost of borrowing and power generation challenges rating them as main risks to the growth prospects.<\/p>\n
He also forewarned of challenges to meet tax revenue targets coupled with challenges emanating from continued drought in direct budget aid from development partners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fiscal deficit is, therefore, expected to increase thereby applying more pressure on inflation, interest rates and economic growth prospects,\u201d Chikaonda said.<\/p>\n
In a separate interview, former NBM Chief Executive Officer, who was also confirmed as the bank\u2019s new chairman, George Partridge concurred with his former boss saying, while the economy has taken a turn, there was need to address other prevailing challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn terms of the economic landscape, it seems we have reached a point whereby economic growth is likely to improve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And in his report to the shareholders, Chikaonda announced a 29 percent growth in group pre-tax profit from K19.6 billion recorded in 2015 to K25.2 billion.<\/p>\n
The profit jump translates into an increase in the amount of dividends to be given to shareholders as the bank declared final dividends of K3.80 billion, representing a total dividend payout K8.35 billion.<\/p>\n
This is in respect of 2016 profits, representing K17.88 per share, having already paid a first interim dividend of K3.01 billion in 2016 and a second interim dividend of K1.54 billion on March 31 2017.<\/p>\n
In 2016, NBM concluded the acquisition of Indebank to consolidate its position as Malawi\u2019s biggest bank by assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) listed National Bank of Malawi (NBM) says it is optimistic that the positive trajectory recorded in some fundamentals of the economy will persist, a development that may influence a further growth of the business in 2017. This was said on Thursday in Blantyre during the bank\u2019s 45th Annual General Meeting (AGM) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":48791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48795,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48788\/revisions\/48795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}