Ziraat’s assets exceed $144 billion: CEO

Neşe Karanfil - ANKARA

The total assets of Turkish state-owned lender Ziraat’s have exceeded 1 trillion Turkish Liras ($114.3 billion), its CEO, Alpaslan Çakar, said during a parliamentary commission session on June 17.

“It is seen that we have given support to the economy with loans worth 743 billion liras [$84.9 billion],” he told members of the committee on public enterprises.

In the meantime, Ziraat has also issued securities worth over 200 billion liras ($22.8 billion) to meet the central government’s liabilities, according to his remarks.

Although the bank was founded in the late 19th century as an agricultural financial institution, it has diversified its business segments since then, said Çakar.

But the bank still continues to provide credit support to the agriculture sector, he added, saying that 685,000 farmers were granted loans last year.

The CEO said that the agricultural sector’s share in the loans granted by the bank is around 20 percent and is followed by the manufacturing sector with 19 percent, commercial sector with 18 percent and energy with 8 percent.
“With 21 million customers, we are the largest digital bank in Turkey,” he said.

Tourism and media industries are also withing the bank’s scope of business, Çakar said.

“Ziraat provides credits to the media sector as well as it grants loans to firms in commerce, service, energy, construction and other sectors,” said the chief executive.

The bank acts in accordance with a set of banking rules regarding every credit account, which are overseen on a daily basis, he added.