Union Bank Nigeria Plc has said it expects to boost lending for the rest of this year after a ₦64 billion write-down in the first half caused its book to shrink.
The Chief Financial Officer, Oyinkan Adewale, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying on a conference call on Tuesday that the lender’s loan book would probably expand by 10 to 12 per cent this year by focusing on consumer goods, agriculture, agro-processing and services such as education and health, transportation, manufacturing and small businesses.
The loan book shrank by nine per cent in the first half, compared to the end of 2017 because of the write-offs.
Adewale said the bank’s ratio of non-performing loans to total credit would improve to below 10 per cent for the full year from 10.8 per cent in the first half and 19.8 per cent at the end of 2017.
He stated that the real estate industry accounted for about 32 per cent of the NPLs.
Last week, the bank, in its unaudited financial statements for the period ended June 30, 2018, reported gross loans of ₦508.5 billion, down from ₦560.7 billion as of December 2017, due to successful recovery/collection efforts and the write-off of some fully provisioned non-performing loans.
It said customer deposits were up by three per cent to ₦826.7 billion from ₦802.4 billion as of December 2017, reflecting a 66 per cent increase in foreign currency deposits and the optimisation of local currency deposit book towards low-cost deposits.