Crane flies

African Business, April, 2008 by Anna Rosenberg

Crane Bank Limited, an indigenously owned bank operating in Uganda, has delivered exceptionally strong figures to post its biggest profit in 13 years prior to a planned listing on the Uganda Stock Exchange later this year. Despite operating costs increasing markedly by 36% to Ush17.8bn ($10.1m) in 2007--mainly due to a rapid rollout of new branches--profits before tax rose 63% to a record 14.3m. Lending went up by 21.7% to 82.3m although provisions for non-performing loans grew only by 7%.

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