Nwabiagya Bank gets US$1m FDI
The Nwabiagya Rural Bank Limited at Barekese in the Nwabiagya District of Ashanti Region has attracted investors from the Netherlands, known as the Goodwell West Africa Microfinance Company Limited, GWAMC.
The foreign company has decided to invest US$1,000,000 in the bank’s equity shares. The investor has so far paid in US$700,000 and since been issued with 2,1000,000 shares for that amount. With that payment, GWAMC is holding 14.03 % shares of the Bank.
The remaining US$300,000 will be paid in due course, and that will also attract another 900,000 ordinary shares to the Investors.
The investor has planned to hold the Bank’s shares for only sixty months -- with the period starting from July 18, 2011 and ending on July 17, 2016.
As at the time of the foreign investment, 12,859,997 ordinary shares had been sold to existing shareholders. The Investors will be holding a total of 3,000,000 shares, and this will push the number of shares sold out to 15,859,997. With this, the Investor will only be holding about 18.9 percent of the Bank’s shares.
The wish of the Investor is that the bank applies the new injection of funds to some specific areas including branch expansion, training and the expansion of the Bank’s microfinance portfolio, and the purchase of means of transport to expand banking activities. The rest are procurement of additional cash teller machines, support to ICT expansion and expansion of the bank’s microfinance and marketing departments.
These and more were made known by the Chairman of the Board of Directors Nana Owusu Sarfo Anwoma II in his report at the Bank’s 23rd Annual General Meeting of shareholders held last week.
The Bank recorded a satisfactory growth in all the performance indicators including profit before tax which are depicted in the table below from 2008 to 2010.
The Directors of the Bank have recommended dividend payment of GH¢0.025 per share for 2010. The total dividend proposed for the year under review is GH¢317,266 as against GH¢219,074 paid in 2009, which represents an increase of GH¢98,192 on the previous year’s figure.
The Bank continues to offer assistance to communities and institutions within its operational territories in terms of community development projects. A total amount of GH¢46,748 was spent in this direction.
Areas that benefitted include education, health, infrastructure, District Farmers’ Day Celebration and scholarship awards to needy-but-brilliant students who hail from the Bank’s operational territories, among other donations.
The Board Chairman in his concluding remarks stated that with the usual very excellent cooperation between the Board and the Management and the entire staff of the Bank, they hope to continue with the impressive performance and also continue supporting their customers to improve their living conditions. He said the Bank will intensify loan recovery, deposit mobilisation and maintain quality assets to increase profitability.
This article was originally posted on Sustainable Development Africa Platform
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