The Tunisian subsidiary of the Qatari banking group, QNB, ended the year 2019 with a record deficit of 46.6 million dinars, after a profit of 3.2 million dinars in 2018.
This underperformance is due in particular to the surge in the cost of risk.
Thus, allocations to provisions on receivables increased from 8.8 million dinars in 2018 to 34.2 million dinars at the end of December 2019, a growth of 288%.
Similarly, net allocations to additional provisions increased from 2.4 million dinars to 10.4 million.
Nevertheless, the bank saw its total operating income increase by 13.8% to 143.8 million dinars, compared to 126.4 million dinars a year earlier, mainly due to the 18% increase in interest payments.
On the same line, operating expenses increased by 24.7% to 95.5 million dinars, compared to 76.6 million in 2018.
This increase is the result of the combined effect of the increase in interest incurred and the increase in losses on commercial securities portfolio.
Consequently, the Net Banking Product (NBP) posted a slight decline of 3% to 48.3 million dinars, compared to 49.8 million at the end of December 2018.
Taking into account the additional provisioning effort mentioned above, the operating result for the year is a deficit of 44.9 million dinars, compared to a surplus of 4 million in 2018.
