UPDATE- Turkey: Banking sector posts $10B+ net profit in 2018

UPDATES WITH MORE FIGURES

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Net profit of banking sector in Turkey totaled 53.52 billion Turkish liras ($10.16 billion) in 2018, the country's banking watchdog announced on Wednesday.

Last year, the banking sector's net profit surged 10.02 percent year-on-year, compared with 48.64 billion liras ($12.88 billion) the previous year, according to the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BRSA).

Surging 18.7 percent on a yearly basis, total assets of the sector amounted to nearly 3.87 trillion liras ($735 billion) as of December 2018.

Loans, the biggest sub-category of assets, rose some 14 percent to reach 2.39 trillion liras ($455 billion).

Deposits held at lenders in Turkey -- the largest liabilities item -- totaled 2.03 trillion Turkish liras ($387 billion), showing an annual hike of 19 percent.

The U.S. dollar/Turkish lira (USD/TRY) exchange rate was around 5.27 as of Dec. 31, versus around 3.80 at the end of 2017.

Pointing lenders' minimum capital requirements, the banking sector's regulatory capital-to-risk-weighted-assets ratio -- the higher the better -- stood at 17.27 percent by the end of 2018, while it was 16.85 percent a year ago.

Indicating the healthiness of given loans, the ratio of non-performing loans to total cash loans -- the lower the better -- was 3.87 percent in the same period, as it was 2.95 percent in the same month of 2017.

As of December 2018, a total of 50 state/private/foreign lenders -- including deposit banks, participation banks, and development and investment banks -- operated in the Turkish banking sector.

The sector had more than 207,700 employees, serving through over 11,500 branches both in Turkey and overseas with some 48,500 ATMs.