Turkey: Banking sector's net profit up over 30 percent

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey’s banking sector made 25.35 billion Turkish liras ($7.24 billion) net profit between January and June this year, according to Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency on Monday.

Semiannual net profit of the banking sector rose 33.2 percent year-on-year, compared with 19.03 billion Turkish liras ($6.62 billion) net profit in the same period of 2016, the banking watchdog said in a report.

Total assets of the Turkish banking sector in the first six month of this year reached 2.97 trillion Turkish liras (some $849 billion), marking nearly 20 percent increase on a yearly basis.

Over the same period, loans provided by the banking sector as the biggest sub-category of assets, climbed to 1.92 trillion Turkish liras (around $548 billion), up from 1.57 trillion Turkish liras (some $546 billion) in June 2016.

The amount of deposits held by the sector increased to nearly 1.58 trillion Turkish liras ($451 billion) in the period of January-June 2017, compared with 1.31 trillion Turkish liras (some $456 billion) deposits in the same period last year.

As of June 2017, the banking sector's regulatory capital to total risk weighted assets ratio was recorded at 16.87 percent -- a significant indicator to figure out minimum capital requirements of lenders.

The ratio of non-performing loans to total cash loans stood at 3.09 percent in the first six months of this year, it said.

In Turkey, over 50 state/private/foreign lenders, including deposit banks, participation banks, development and investment banks had nearly 12,000 domestic and overseas branches with more than 210,000 employees as of June, 2017.

Turkish banking sector posted 37.5 billion Turkish liras ($10.7 billion) net profit last year while total assets of the sector stood at 2.73 trillion Turkish liras ($778 billion) as of Dec. 30, 2016.

On the last business day of last year, the banking sector's total loans and deposits stood at 1.73 trillion Turkish liras (around $495 billion) and 1.45 trillion Turkish liras (nearly $415 billion), respectively.

According to Turkish Central Bank data, the U.S. dollar/Turkish lira exchange rate was 3.02 on average last year while one dollar was traded for 3.64 liras on average in the period of January-June this year.