Mashreq chief executive expects profits to grow this year

The chief executive of Mashreq, the Dubai's second-largest bank by market value, said he was "optimistic" about the bank's performance this year and expects profits to grow by between 10 and 15 per cent.

Mashreq reported last week a 67 per cent jump in net profits in 2012, on the back of lower provisioning and higher fee income.

While not reaching such heights this year, Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair said the bank would still see healthy growth in earnings.

"I'm optimistic about our performance in 2013 ... profits will be anything between 10 to 15 per cent higher," he said.

Mr Al Ghurair said he was hopefully that provisioning at the bank would continue to recede in 2013 - they dropped to Dh826.5 million in 2012 from Dh1.2 billion in the previous year.

Dubai lenders were hit hard by impairments on bad loans in the wake of the a collapse in the local property market, which saw prices slump more than 50 per cent from their 2008 peak, and the need for state-linked entities to restructure billion of dollars of debts.

However, most restructurings have been completed and recent months have seen signs of a recovery in Dubai's property market, leading to optimism the worst is behind the emirate's banking sector.

* Reuters