SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), September 29 (SeeNews) – Turkey's state-controlled Ziraat Bank [BIST:TCZB] provided a 50 million euro ($65 million) loan to Bosnia and announced plans for its local unit to enter the country’s insurance and leasing market, Bosnian media said on Monday.
Ziraat Bank’s CEO, Huseyin Aydin, was cited by news portal Indikator.ba as saying that the bank's plans for the Bosnian unit, Ziraat Bank BH, foresee raising it to the top five banks in Bosnia in terms of assets within two years from the ninth position now. The ultimate goal is to be among the first three.
According to the latest data of Ziraat Bank BH, its assets totaled 228.2 million marka ($148 million/114 million euro) at the end of 2012, up from 160 million marka a year earlier.
The loan deal, for which details were not provided, was signed in Sarajevo.
Turkey’s Ziraat Bank, which operates in 17 countries, entered the Bosnian market in 1997.
(1 euro=1.95583 marka)