Kazakhstan's Halyk Bank posts 58pc profit jump on lower bad debt

ALMATY: Halyk Bank , Kazakhstan's second-largest lender by assets, posted a 58 percent rise in net income in 2014 on a sharp reduction of bad debt.

Halyk, the Central Asian nation's most profitable bank, said its net profit totalled 114.4 billion tenge ($617 million) last year, beating its own forecast of between 95 billion tenge and 100 billion tenge.

The bank's impairment charges plunged by 71.6 percent, mainly because of the repayment of overdue debts by some corporate clients in the first three quarters of last year.

Net interest margin, an indicator of a bank's efficiency, grew to 5.8 percent last year from 4.9 percent in 2013.

Halyk said its assets grew by 12.1 percent, while net loans issued to customers rose by 11.2 percent.

Halyk's largest single shareholder is Almex, a holding company owned by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev's middle daughter Dinara and her entrepreneur husband Timur Kulibayev