Turkey's Ziraat Bank sees surge in profits

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's state-owned lender Ziraat Bank saw profits surge by 39 percent in first half of the year compared with the same period last year, according to the bank late Tuesday.

Ziraat Bank, the largest state-owned commercial bank, said in a statement its profits for the first half of 2016 increased to 3.39 billion Turkish liras ($1.14 billion) from 2.43 billion liras ($0.82 billion) the previous year.

The bank's total credit volume has increased by 8 percent from the end of 2015, the statement said.

"Ziraat Bank was number one in the banking sector, considering the total amount of loans, cash loans and non-cash loans," Huseyin Aydin, chief executive officer of the bank, said.

"The fact that 63 percent of our assets are of loans, and 75 percent of these loans are of corporate loans demonstrates our endeavors to grow in terms of real sector credits," he added.

Ziraat employs more than 20,000 people in 1,785 branches in Turkey and in 18 foreign countries, including Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Russia, the U.K., the U.S., Georgia, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan.