UBA Posts Modest Performance

Board and senior staff members of UBA Ghana

MANAGING DIRECTOR of United Bank for Africa (UBA) Ghana Limited, Olalekan Balogun, has stated that the bank posted a modest performance in 2021 in spite of the macroeconomic volatility in the global and national environment.

According to him, the bank closed the year with a significant growth of 36% of its balance sheet from GHȼ3.95 million in 2020 to GHȼ25.37 million in 2021, whilst the bank grew customer deposits by 46.24% to GHȼ24.1 billion, describing it as “an emphatic vote of confidence” in bank’s approach to support them through a difficult year.

Speaking at the UBA Ghana’s annual general meeting in Accra yesterday, Mr. Balogun, however, said the year-on-year profit before tax declined by 2% as a result of additional provision on loans following the decision to improve the provision coverage.

“The continued prudent, effective and efficient risk management measures implemented by the bank caused non-performing loans to reduce significantly from 44.3% to 29.4%, the bank increased its liquidity to 86.9% (from 74.3% in 2020),” he indicated.

For him, this shows a significant improvement in the strength and health of the bank’s balance sheet, announcing that they believe the robust business performance in spite of the challenges, “puts the bank on a firm foundation for the year 2022 and beyond.”

“We have laid down a concrete foundation which is going to see us sustainably create value for our stakeholders in the years ahead. Actualising this will need investing efforts and commitments to certain identifiable critical factors,” he noted.

Board Chairman of UBA, Kweku Andoh Awotwi said the bank exercised financial prudence and stayed the course in executing its action plan to deliver sustainable, profitable and socially beneficial outcomes.

He disclosed that during the year, the bank’s focus remained on becoming a systematically important bank in Ghana, in line with its vision, and added that as a board, “we are committed to this mandate and will continue to work with Executive Management to execute strategies which will drive the bank towards this goal.”

According to him, the global economic recovery faced significant headwinds amid new waves of COVID-19 infections, persistent labour market challenges, lingering supply-chain challenges and rising inflationary pressures.

“After a global contraction of 3.4% in 2020, global output expanded by 5.5% in 2021. Global recovery in output in 2021 was largely driven by robust consumer spending and some uptake in investment. Trade in goods bounced back, surpassing the pre-pandemic level.”

BY Ernest Kofi Adu