Bank of Kigali (BK) posted strong earnings in the first three months of 2011.

According to the bank’s financial report, its net profit increased from Rwf849.9m in the first quarter of 2010 to Rwf1.9b during the same period this year.

In an interview with Business Times, BK’s Chief Operations Manager, Lawson Naibo, attributed the continuous success to the hard work from the bank’s employees.

"It’s also due to the bank’s high loan book plus the effective cost management that we are registering tremendous success,” Naibo explained.

He pointed out that the bank is planning to introduce more products to attract more customers and retain the present ones.

"We are introducing free Visa Cards which can carry out international transactions and also reintroduce SMS Banking which will be reloaded into the Mobile banking platform. This will be more efficient than the normal Mobile banking that is used in the country.”

With new products, it will help us to retain our position as the leading commercial bank in the country, he said.

Latest statistics by the central bank indicate that the performance of commercial banks in the country improved significantly largely due to the state of economy which registered a growth of 10 percent in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period last year.

According to the central bank, consolidated net profit for the banks for the period rose to Rwf4.59 billion from a net loss of Rwf283.02 million in the same period last year, representing a 1,724 percent increase.

The central bank says the performance is a result of a strong asset growth and competition in the mobilisation of deposits after banks strengthened their activities.

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