We’re yet to find investor for Twiga Bancorp, says BoT

Dar es Salaam. Bank of Tanzania (BoT) has not yet found an investor for Twiga Bancorp, the regulator said yesterday.

Last year, Twiga Bancorp was placed under the BoT’s statutory management for lack of adequate capital. That came after months of deliberation on how to recapitalise Twiga Bancorp.

Belonging to, funded by, and controlled by the government, Twiga Bancorp came into existence in 1992 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the formerly state-owned National Bank of Commerce (NBC), and transformed into a non-banking financial institution in 1998 mandated to handle all banking transactions except the taking or accepting of current account deposits from customers.

A manager in the BoT’s directorate of banking supervision, Mr Eliamringi Mandari, yesterday that having taken over the bank, the regulator still faces a challenge of finding an investor to inject capital into it.

“We are yet to find an investor who is ready to invest in the bank but remain hopeful,” he stressed.

He said the BoT still seeks to ensure that Twiga Bancorp returns to its normal operations, noting however that if the situation worsens, the bank will be forced to exist.

He, however, noted that since the receivership clients’ trust has returned and that the bank was still doing business as usual whereby people were still depositing and withdrawing in accordance with the limits set by bank’s new management.

Towards the end of last year, BoT governor Benno Ndulu told reporters that the undercapitalised institution poses a risk to the financial sector and the continuation of Twiga Bancorp’s operations could threaten the interests of its depositors.

BoT had suspended the board of directors and the senior management team, and appointed a statutory manager to take over operations.

That came after the government commissioned a study to look into options of equity investment after the bank was reported to have been facing liquidity issues.