The Re­pub­lic Bank Group has record­ed a prof­it of $297.3 mil­lion for the first quar­ter end­ed De­cem­ber 2014–an in­crease of 2.1 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2013. To­tal as­sets stood at $60 bil­lion at De­cem­ber 31, an in­crease of 3.7 per cent from De­cem­ber 2013 and 1.1 per cent over the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 2014.

In an­nounc­ing the re­sults, Re­pub­lic Bank's chair­man, Ronald F deC Har­ford said the loan port­fo­lio con­tin­ues to grow with a year on year in­crease of $2.3 bil­lion (9 per cent) and a 3.2 per cent growth for the three months to De­cem­ber 2014.

This led to an in­crease in net in­ter­est in­come of $25.2 mil­lion (4.5 per cent).

Har­ford said that op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es were up by $54 mil­lion (12 per cent) from 2013, a ma­jor con­tribut­ing fac­tor be­ing the in­creased cost of com­pli­ance in the cur­rent reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment.

"While a sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mance was achieved for the first quar­ter, as­tute as­set man­age­ment will con­tin­ue to be cru­cial giv­en the con­tin­ued slug­gish eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment in Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, the de­cline in oil prices and its po­ten­tial im­pact on gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture and eco­nom­ic growth in Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said.

Har­ford fur­ther stat­ed that the group re­mains well po­si­tioned for the fu­ture as it is well cap­i­talised with de­clin­ing non-per­form­ing loans and high liq­uid­i­ty.