East African Business Week

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA  - The CRDB Bank, one of Tanzania’s biggest commercial banks, will open a branch in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura, by mid 2012, becoming the second local commercial entity to venture abroad.
The bank's Managing Director, Dr Charles Kimei, said they targeted Bujumbura because the country's banking system is still undeveloped with a mere 6% population banked
He said groundwork has been done with both financial institutions' authorities across the boarder.  "Burundi needs microfinance services…we are ready to help them to develop," Dr Kimei told journalists before presenting CDRB's progress performance report for the first nine months of this year.
The bank  said a number of its customers ply between Dar es Salaam and Bujumbura and others access their services at border town to both Tanzania andBurundi.
"We are building our brand during these hard times, to create a trust and credibility to the society," Dr Kimei said.
He told journalists that CRDB wants to solidify its presence in Bujumbura to become a leading entity driven by respect and credibility.
He said the bank delayed to venture outside Tanzania because the internal "market is still too good", surrounded with a number opportunities.
But with growing activities in the East African Community (EAC) bloc, the financial sector going out strategy is now important to the bank's expansion, Dr Kimei said.
He said they will cross-list at the Nairobi Stock Exchange and Uganda Securities Exchange - to ease share trading and not to raise capital at the right time. The bank assets in the first nine month of this year grew by 18% to Tshs 1.6t (US$ 914,3m) up from 1.3t($742,86m) of previous similar period, while its deposits also increased to Tsh2.3b ($1.35m) from  2.1b ($1.2m).
"We have a strong balance sheet which will enable us to delivery the quality of services in accordance to the value of our customers," Dr Kimei,  said.