The “Banque de Financement des Petites et Moyennes Entreprises” (BFPME) has just published its financial statements for the year ending December 31, 2019 as they will be submitted for approval to the Ordinary General Meeting to be held on August 31, 2020.
These statements show a net loss (before accounting changes) of 4.1 million dinars, compared to a net loss of 1.9 million in 2018.
The 2019 financial statements were subject to an accounting change that was treated as an error correction, the effect of which on prior years has been charged to the opening equity of the 2019 fiscal year.
According to the auditors’ report, this is an error correction for an amount of 3.4 million dinars following the reduction of the State guarantee relating to the FOPRODI and RIICTIC allocations set at 75% of total commitments including only the outstanding amount, without taking into account unpaid principal and interest.
The bank achieved last year a net banking income (NBI) of about 8.9 million dinars, compared to 8.4 million in 2018, recording a slight increase of 6%.
Operating income amounted to 13.1 million dinars, while operating expenses amounted to 4.1 million dinars.
Taking into account personnel costs of 9.2 million dinars and general operating expenses of 2.4 million dinars, as well as provisions of 1.7 million dinars, the operating result for the period shows a deficit of 4 million dinars, compared to -1.9 million dinars in 2018.
Moreover, the auditors have revealed that the bank’s information system suffers from several failures relating to both technical aspects and those inherent to system security and data integrity, essentially for the credit application.
These shortcomings have had a negative impact on the functionalities of the applications and have led to significant discrepancies and inconsistencies, as stated in the report.
