Ecobank: We want to grow with Mozambique’s economic development

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Ecobank: We want to grow with Mozambique’s economic development

1:54 CAT | 11 May 2020

FILE - Ecobank CEO Ade Ayeyemi at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, Rwanda in March 2019. File photo: Himbaza Pacifique/ACF 2019/The Africa Report]

Ecobank Group CEO Ade Ayeyemi said today, in an interview with Lusa, that his goal in Mozambique was to make the operation profitable, adding that the bank intended to grow alongside the country’s economic development.

“We remain committed to Mozambique, and we have a good operation in the country. We want our operation to become profitable as the country continues to progress on the path of economic development,” Ayeyemi said.

In an interview with Lusa from Lomé, the capital of Togo, the CEO of the largest African bank explained that Ecobank “will benefit from being part of this improving economy” and added that its presence in the country was part of a regional context.

“We have branches in neighbouring countries Like Zimbabwe and Tanzania, and Mozambique is part of the system, from a geographical point of view,” Ayeyemi said.

Mozambique is one of the Portuguese-speaking countries where Ecobank, a pan-African financial institution, maintains a presence, in addition to Equatorial Guinea, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, after having left Angola at the end of last year.

“Angola is a good African economy. It has many minerals and is making progress after the change of government and is going where it should go, but we have not had an operation there since the end of last year,” the Ecobank Group CEO said.

Asked about the reason for leaving, Ade Ayeyemi replied only that “it was an economic decision, it takes time … we never started, we had a licence, we talked to the regulator, it took a long time for us to be able leave, but we have left and we are no longer a bank in Angola”.

In Mozambique, Ecobank has four branches, employing 118 people, in the large cities – two in the south, one in the centre and one in the north.

Lusa asked the bank about its last year’s results, but an official source responded that the accounts of operations in Mozambique would not be released until they had been audited.

Source: Lusa