Turkish state-run banks post $2.4 billion net profit in 9 months

ISTANBUL

Turkey’ state-run banks – Ziraat Bank, Vakıf Bank, and Halk Bank - posted 10.94 billion Turkish Liras (nearly $2.38 billion) net profit in the first nine months of 2018.

The net profit in the three banks totaled 12.3 billion liras ($3.4 billion) in the same period last year, according to data compiled by Anadolu Agency from non-consolidated balance sheets.

The total assets of the three conventional banks - excluding the two state-run participation banks - reached nearly 1.3 trillion Turkish liras ($213 billion) by the end of September.

Among the three banks, Ziraat saw the highest net profit with 5.64 billion liras (nearly $1.23 billion), down by 13 percent year-on-year.
Its assets totaled 552 billion liras ($90 billion), as of the end of September.

Vakıf Bank’s net profit rose 10.7 percent to 3.1 billion liras ($675 million).

Halk Bank’s net profit dropped 26.6 percent to 2.2 billion liras ($479 million) during the same period.

While Halk’s total assets amounted to 387.3 billion liras ($63.6 billion), Vakıf’s total assets stood at 353.4 billion liras ($58 billion).

The total net profit of the Turkish banking sector reached 42.17 billion liras ($9.2 billion) in the nine-month period of 2018. Its total assets stood at 4.2 trillion Turkish liras ($689 billion) as of September, according to the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) data.

The banking sector’s regulatory capital to risk weighted assets ratio - a significant indicator to figure out minimum capital requirements of lenders - was at 18.08 percent this September, versus 17.20 percent in the same month last year.

In Turkey, some 50 state/private/foreign lenders, including deposit banks, participation banks, development and investment banks had nearly 11,600 domestic and overseas branches with around 208,000 employees as of September.

The average U.S. dollar/Turkish Lira exchange rate was 4.59 in the first nine months of this year while one dollar traded for 3.6 liras on average in the January-September period last year. It was also 6.09 as of the end of September.