DOHA: Revenue of Qatari banks grew by 12 percent in 2012 as the combined revenues of the banking industry in the Middle East settled at single digit revenue growth, up 6.9 percent.
Banks in Saudi Arabia and Oman achieved high single digit growth rates, while banks in the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain achieved a revenue growth rate of 5 percent or below in 2012, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
The new study is part of BCG’s annual banking performance indices measuring the development of banking revenues (operating income) and profits for leading Middle East banks.
In 2012, loan loss provisions varied significantly by country. In particular, banks in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had to build higher provisions due to increasing delinquencies in sectors such as real estate, construction, banks, financial services, and manufacturing.
UAE banks were, on aggregate, able to significantly reduce the existing high provisioning levels by 13 percent. The retail banking revenues in the GCC which had remained rather flat during the last few years experienced a further uptick of some 4 percent, largely due to an increase in the three biggest markets – the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Oman repeated the strong double digit growth of the previous year. On the whole, the variance between growth rates of individual banks in retail was very high and ranged from -39 percent to +19 percent. The Peninsula
