Dubai - Mubasher: Al Baraka Banking Group BSC (ABG) on Tuesday said its net income attributable to the parent decreased by 8% year-on-year to $32 million in the fourth quarter of 2017 from $35 million in the comparable period a year earlier.

For the full year 2017, net income attributable to equity holders of the parent decreased by 15% to $129 million against $152 million in 2016.

Al Baraka Bank, which is listed on the Bahrain and NASDAQ Dubai bourses, indicated that profits for equity holders during the first nine months of the fiscal year 2017/2018 reached $97 million compared to $116.42 million in the same period of the last year, signalling a 17% decrease.

Total operating income decreased by 7% to $1 billion in 2017 compared to $1.1 billion for the same period last year, while net operating income decreased by 15% to $430 million from $507 million for 2016, the bank revealed.

Al Baraka Banking Group’s chairman Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel noted that despite the slowdown in global economic growth in 2017, the bank succeeded in achieving positive results.

Al Baraka attributed the decline in net income to “the decrease of local currencies of four major banking units of the Group against the US dollar.”

However, assets, which were influenced by the decrease of local currencies in some countries, recorded a 9% growth to $25.5 billion compared to $23.4 billion at end of 2016.

“ABG has encountered challenges during 2017, most notably is the depreciation of currencies in some countries in which our units operate, which affected the growth rates of the balance sheet items and income,” commented Al Baraka’s President and CEO Adnan Ahmed Yousef.

He added that the Bahraini Islamic bank was able to compensate for this effect “by increasing the volume of business in the Group units significantly. Therefore, we consider the results that we achieved during 2017 are good, given the excellent profits results reported by the most of our units in their countries.”