DBE plans to disburse 30 bln Birr loan in 2022/23 fiscal year
The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE), the state policy bank, announced on Friday, September 2, 2022 that it has a plan to disburse 30 billion Birr loans in 2022/23 fiscal year.
“In 2021/22 fiscal year we disbursed 22 billion Birr loan,” Yohannes Ayalew (PhD), President of DBE, said on Friday at the sideline of a Policy Dialogue Forum on Ethiopian Economy held at Elilly Hotel. “Our initial plan was to disburse 19 billion Birr loan in 2021/22 fiscal year but we revised our plan due to the high demand for loans.”
Commercialized agriculture and agro-processing, priority areas for the Bank, consumed 70 percent of its available loans. Extension of credit to businesses in the manufacturing and mining industries made up the rest.
DBE reported a pre-tax profit of 3.8 billion Birr in the already finalized Ethiopian fiscal year of 2021/22 on July 8, 2022. It also reported a gross profit of 4.2 billion Birr the previous year.
Bad loans at DBE were ballooned to an alarming rate of 39.4 percent, which was the highest in September 2018. Low productivity of commercial farmland that the Bank extended loans to, intermittent rainfall, the foreign currency crunch; management problems and political unrest in the country were reported to be the primary causes of the accelerated NPL ratio in 2018.
“But now, our NPL has been decreasing in the last three years,” Yohannes said.
“We’ve also planned to open 30 branch offices, which will increase our networks across the country to 108 branches,” he told journalists.
