2019 successful year for BSP

LAST year was another successful year for Bank South Pacific (BSP), according to the bank.
Chairman Sir Kostas Constantinou and the board on Thursday released the group results for the full-year to Dec 31, 2019.
In announcing the group’s profit, Sir Kostas said despite continued challenging conditions, 2019 was another successful financial year.
Highlights of the group performance includes:

• THE group recorded a consolidated operating profit after tax of K890.4 million for 2019 financial year, a 5.5 per cent increase on consolidated 2018 operating profit after tax of K844.1 million. Total assets of the group increased by 6.3 per cent or approximately K1.446 billion to K24.527 billion driven by good growth in the loan book across all countries. Loan book growth was K670.2 million and cash and short term deposits increased in final quarter of 2019;
• GROUP revenues were up marginally during the year, predominantly from interest income from loans and advances consequent to BSP growing its loan book by 5.5 per cent. Across Pacific, BSP Bank Samoa achieved very good growth as did BSP Finance Cambodia; and,
• ACROSS the region most economies in which BSP operates maintained reasonable levels of growth. Samoa’s GDP remained at around 3.4 per cent, Tonga’s moderated to 3.5 per cent, Cook Islands was strong at 4.2 per cent, Solomon Islands moderated to around 2.8 per cent, and Vanuatu’s was steady at 3.2 per cent.

Sir Kostas noted the outlook for 2020 across the group was for slower growth giving regard to economic conditions that remain challenging in most countries.
“Economic growth in PNG will be slower than previous years and will be dependent upon successful negotiation of a headline extractive industry project,” he said.
“Events of early 2020 related to the coronavirus in China will have an impact on the global economy and economies that are commodity based such as PNG,” he said.
“Notwithstanding somewhat lower growth, we are well placed to meet the challenges.”