BRE Bank president optimistic about 2003 outlook

The president of BRE, Wojciech Kostrzewa, has announced that the bank recorded no decrease in the quality of its loan portfolio in first quarter of 2003, though no exact figures are to be revealed until May. According to Kostrzewa, the economy is to grow by 2%-3% in 2003 and in turn the ratio of bad loans, which amounted to 19.9% in 2002, should fall substantially. Kostrzewa stressed, however, that due to government regulations the bank is obliged to reduce the category of the loan when delays in servicing it amount to more than 30 days while EU financial institutions make such decisions after 90 days. "If we used the latter solution, our bad loans portfolio would drop by 16 percentage points," explained Kostrzewa. After last year's substantial losses, BRE has decided to change its investment policy and sell some of its stakes, including those in Elektrim and Telbank. (Parkiet, p. 5) M.M.