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It is worth to mention that BIsB is the first registered institution in Bahrain stock to announce its Q1 financial results for the year 2006. Also, BIsB was the first bank in Bahrain to announce its 2005 year end financial results.
In a statement, Mr. Khalid Al Bassam, Bahrain Islamic Bank Chairman said:
"The remarkable results are due to the excellent performance and the significant growth in finance and investment operations which contributed to registering a high increase in the total income from the Bank's operations in addition to a positive increase in total assets and customer accounts."
Meanwhile, Mr. Yousif Saleh Khalaf, Bank's Chief Executive Officer said: "The operating income rose to BD5.2 million or an increase of 63 percent compared with BD3.2 million during the same period of last year 2005." He attributed the growth to the continuous increase in Islamic finance transactions and the attractive yields on the Bank's various investment activities."
"The increase in the total income resulted in the increase on the returns of the investment accounts to BD2 million showing an increase of 100 percent compared with returns of BD1 million last year 2005. This is an indication of the management's interest in distributing the best returns to its investors which would enable the Bank to have a bigger share of business in the local market where the market rates are continuously rising." added Mr. Khalaf.
He also said: "For the Bank's financial position, the total assets witnessed a 7 percent (Seven percent) increase in the total assets during the first quarter of the year amounting to BD342 million. Such increase focused primarily on the finance transactions and continuous growth in the Bank's investments in general."
It should be noted that the BIsB achieved a 99% increase in its net profits in 2005 compared with 2004. The Bank paid dividends at the rate of 27 percent of the paid up capital compared with 22 percent in 2004.
The 2005 profit distributions represent payment of 15 percent cash dividends and distribution of bonus shares at the rate of 12 shares per each 100 shares owned while distributions in 2004 were at the rate of 12 percent cash dividends and 10 percent as bonus shares.
It is worth to mention that Bahrain Islamic Bank was one of the receiving banks for Al Salam Bank initial public share offering and the Bank provided an Islamic financing service for subscribers to the shares of Al Salam Bank, which is considered the first service of this kind in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
BIsB has also been selected to become the sole receiving bank for applications for subscription to the shares of International United Bank (IUB) in the Kingdom of Bahrain. IUB has recently obtained a license from the Bahrain Monetary Agency (BMA) to operate as an Islamic investment bank.
During the first quarter of this year, the Bank witnessed an unprecedented level of activities covering a wide range of banking, social, humanitarian and other areas. On the economic level, the Bank signed an agreement with ITS to provide modern banking technology services and solutions for the Bank to enable it to face the increasing competitive challenges in the regional financial markets.
Further, in the second major technological step for providing the best customer services, the Bank outsourced all the Bank's ATM and debit card transactions to Euronet Middle East.
During this period, BIsB opened a specialized play therapy centre for treating abused children. Parallel with the opening of the Centre, a specialised play therapy workshop was sponsored, which was of considerable benefit to professionals and specialists in treatment of children victimized by family violence.
Also a specialised training course for protection of children from abuse and negligence was organized and attracted 45 participants and involved family physicians, community nurses, social workers and health education specialists. Most recently the Bank sponsored a low income child suffering from autism and provided the costs and fees of her private tutor too.
Following the publication of the cartoons that were offensive to Prophet Mohamed (PBUH), the Bank sponsored the "Take Your Gift Scheme" through which more than 15,000 gifts were distributed to the Kingdom's visitors during the Formula 1 event.
Also sponsored was the publication of a book entitled "Glimpses of our Civilisation, this is Islam". The book was presented to all the ambassadors of foreign countries in the Kingdom, and arrangements are under way to present the book to several Danish government officials and journalists too.
In the community service area, BIsB sponsored a specialised course for youngsters entitled "Successful Relations". Believing in the significance of supporting young people and to encourage them to further their academic studies, the Bank also sponsored two Bahraini students from the University of Bahrain to take part in an educational trip to Jordan by providing all the costs of the trip including the air tickets, accommodation and boarding costs as well as the internal travels in the country.
Bahrain Islamic Bank was established in 1979 as the first Islamic commercial bank in the Kingdom of Bahrain, ever since the Bank enjoyed a remarkable growth with its shareholders' equity amounting to about BD72 million and total assets exceeded BD320 million as at the end of 2005.
Posted by Anne-Birte Stensgaard, Senior News Editor
