August 8 (SeeNews) - Serbia's Komercijalna Banka [BEL:KMBN] booked a pre-tax profit of 31 million euro ($35.9 million) in the first half of 2018, extending its positive performance, it said on Wednesday.
Komercijalna Banka has a capital adequacy ratio of 29.3%, which is significantly above the regulatory threshold of 12% prescribed by the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), Komercijalna said in a statement sent to SeeNews.
Komercijalna said in August 2017 it swung to 5.656 billion dinars ($55.7 million/47.2 billion euro) profit in the first half of last year from a loss of 2.646 billion dinars in the like period of 2016.
According to the latest available data from NBS, Komercijalna holds a share of 11% of the domestic banking market in terms of assets.
This year, Komercijalna Banka is committed to digitizing its business.
"The emphasis is on the dynamic development of the use of mobile telephony in the payment for goods and services, expansion in development and new functionalities of e-commerce services, as well as on the automation of internal business processes to accelerate and improve the quality of work," it said.
In late July, NBS governor Jorgovanka Tabakovic said preparations for the sale of Komercijalna Banka have started.
"The preparations for the privatisation of Komercijalna Banka are already underway and the central bank participates in the process," Tabakovic said.
Earlier that month, in a statement on the 30-month Policy Coordination Instrument-supported programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Serbian government said it plans to complete the sale of Komercijalna Banka by the end of September 2019.
The authorities will adopt a decision to initiate the privatisation of blue-chip Komercijalna by end-February 2019 and the tender is expected to be launched by end-June 2019.
The government owns 41.74% of the share capital of Komercijalna, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development controls 24.43%, the IFC Capitalization Fund holds a 10.15% stake and the remainder is in the hands of private investors.
($=0.861786 euro)