The Development Bank of Namibia (DBN) attained a net operating profit of N$62 million in the last financial year. 

This was revealed by the Chief Executive Officer of DBN, Dr. John Steytler, at the launch of the DBN Integrated Annual Report 2023/2024 in Windhoek on Thursday. 

Dr. Steytler said this net operating profit marks significant progress for the bank as it is 62% of DBN's target. 

"This has a positive shift after two consecutive years of making losses. I must thank my predecessors for putting plans in place that helped us achieve a net profit of N$62 million after years of making losses of about N$200 million."

In addition, its net interest income, which is a measure of its financial sustainability, increased by 29% year-on-year, from N$348 million in 2023 to N$450 million in 2024. 

This, the bank said, demonstrates its ability to generate income from its core leading activities. 

However, the loan book of DBN continues to show poor quality, with the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio increasing by two percent year on year, which currently stands at 36. 

"This is a single challenge that is facing DBN currently. NPL's issue is really simple because of the percentage of our loans that are not being repaid back by clients, and we get asked a lot how we justify such leaves of NPL. So we need to put two things in context to say DBN is a development bank and has a high profile compared to commercial banks. The pandemic really negatively impacted our clients, and at DBN we believe that the performance of the bank is guided by what happens in the broader economy," explained the bank's Chief Financial Officer, Micky Mutenda. 

He said the bank will continue to roll out its non-performing loan strategy and implement recommendations from the NPL task force. 

Over the past 20 years, the bank has invested over N$21 billion in the country's economy and created over 76,000 jobs. 

"The SME section is very impactful when it comes to job creation, and we see it in the result where we are saying that a total of 780 jobs were created during the reporting period emanating from the SME leg," said Sara Kapiye, the bank's Chief Human Capital Officer.

The bank projects loan book growth of N$1.29 billion by the year 2029 and targets to create 25,000 sustainable jobs over the next five years.