Al-Baraka Islamic Bank, Bahrain has announced that its operations in Pakistan have achieved substantial growth in 2007 in terms of revenues and branch network.
Total assets increased by 15.1 percent to 357 million dollars, and net profits by a remarkable 90 percent to 5.3 million dollars, while the bank also opened six new branches, with a total of 18 branches located in important cities of Pakistan.
In a statement about the results of its operations in Pakistan, the bank said that it had achieved all the targets set for 2007. Financing operations witnessed an increase in the number and diversity of its consumer finance products, leading to an increase of 207 million dollars at the end of the year.
Concentrating primarily on financing foreign trade, it witnessed an increase in the volume of business financed amounting to 462 million dollars during 2007. The bank was also able to attract increased customer deposits, which rose by 23 percent to 280 million dollars at the year-end.
Al-Baraka Banking Group's Chief Executive Officer Adnan Ahmed Yousif said the bank's performance in Pakistan was clear proof of the success of the group's programmes. Al-Baraka Islamic Bank's General Manager Mohammad Isa Mutaweh said that those results reflected very positively upon the bank's operations and revenues in the year 2008.
The bank operations in Pakistan command recognition at the international level as reflected by the rating that JCR-VIS, an affiliate of the leading international rating agency JCR Japan. It gave "A-1" for the bank's short-term commitments, "A" for long-term commitments with a "stable" outlook.
Furthermore, the bank is well known in Pakistan for its social role and generous support to different charity projects and organisations in the field of healthcare and education, while it also plans to establish an academy in Lahore to provide training on Islamic banking.