LAHORE   -  A meeting of the Board of Directors of The Bank of Punjab (BOP) was held where in Annual Audited Financial Statements of the Bank for the year ended December 31, 2017and Un-audited Financial Statements for 1st quarter of year 2018ended March 31, 2018 were approved by the Board.

The financial viability created through capital management measures and superb performance of the Bank in the past few years has enabled the Bank to take an important step of fully providingfor the legacy Non-performing loans portfolio (NPLs), covered through Letters of Comfort (LOCs) issued by the Government of Punjab (GOPb), as of December 31, 2017 i.e. well before the expiry date of December 31, 2018.

All stakeholders are well aware of the fact that financial mess created by imprudent lending decisions of previous management forced the Bank to agree upon a way forward with the Regulator and Sponsors which included certain NPLs provisioning relaxations. And while the Bank has been continuously posting phenomenal financial results in past few years, benefit of Bank's performance could not be fully passed on to the shareholders due to said relaxations constraining payouts under the applicable Prudential Regulations. Therefore, the BOD took the historic step of making full provision and that too full one year prior to the expiry of the LOCs to make good the provisioning shortfall thereby meeting the SBP's provisioning requirements and also paving way to meet Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) requirement through a comprehensive Capital Management Plan. As such, major impediment hindering Dividend payouts to shareholders now stands removed.

It is pertinent to mention that providing legacy NPLs is no way adversely affecting Bank's resolve to recover the same through all available legal means. The Bank would continue to make vigorous efforts as before for recovery of these NPLs and future recovery would provide additional boost to Bank's profitability.

During the year 2017, Net Interest Margin (NIM) of the Bank improved significantly to Rs. 15.6 billion as against Rs. 12.2 billion during last year thereby reflecting a healthy growth of 28%. The Bank earned operational profit of Rs.8.7 billion during the year 2017. However, the Bank charged additional provision of Rs. 12.3 billion against loans covered under LOCs and registered after tax loss of Rs.(3.3) billion for the year 2017. Had said provision not been charged, Bank's profit after tax would have been Rs.4.7 billion. Despite huge provisioning, the book value per share remained above par.

As on December 31, 2017, the Deposits of the Bank stood at the level of Rs. 556.3 billion as against Rs. 453.2 billion last year, thereby showing a healthy growth of 23%. The gross advances and investments stood at Rs. 341.7 billion and Rs. 242.5 billion, respectively. The Bank's Total Assets as on December 31, 2017 stood at Rs. 649.5 billion as against Rs. 545.2 billion as on December 31, 2016.