Ethiopia's Zemen Bank announced it has sold close to 200 million birr in shared in the past two month, achieving its target of capital increase for the fiscal year. The sale of shares has been limited to existing share holders in the bank. The total capital of the bank now stands at 400 million birr, a two fold increase from the previous year.

The Bank noted that its deposit base in the first nine months of the current fiscal year has increased 42 percent and had passed 2.5 billion birr, all mobilized from a single main branch.

Loans and investments had risen 39 percent over the same period, reaching close to 2 billion birr at the end of March 2013. Building upon a record in attracting foreign exchange inflows from exporters and foreign investors, the bank’s forex inflows are up 70 percent so far this year.

Regarding recent media reports about Access Real Estate, Zemen Bank said that the bank is not in any way undermined by the financial difficulties being encountered by the company. Contrary to some misunderstandings, Access Real Estate did not have shares in Zemen Bank, nor vice versa. Moreover, although the company maintained an account at the bank’s main branch, Zemen Bank had zero loan exposure to Access Real Estate.

Source: The Reporter