The managing director and chief executive officer of Skye Bank Gambia has said that his bank was able to achieve in the last one year, about US$6 million new investment already on the ground.

Akim Yusuf made this disclosure Wednesday at a press briefing held at the bank’s head office along Kairaba Avenue. The briefing was meant for the bank to showcase its foreign investment in the country.He explained that the bank clocked three years in The Gambia in July 2012.“At the beginning of July 13th in 2009, we promised that we are going to be a development partner to the economy and number one of our objectives is scorn well,” he said.

According to him, during the last three years of the bank’s existence in The Gambia, they were able to open a second branch in Banjul. He said in the area of development partnership the bank has been able to attract two major investments into the economy. “One of the areas of investment includes agriculture. We have invested US$2M in the poultry industry too. The target is to have 50,000 chickens every month and that 20 chickens have been sold,” he added.

Yusuf further informed the gathering that the bank recently launched a product called the ‘Skye Flit Cash’. He explains: “What the product does is inter-West Africa money transfer service and it has been doing well. The product is working only in Skye Bank network between Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone. We are working with some international financial institutions to increase our capital by D100M rather than the D50M that the Central Bank of The Gambia is asking for.”

The Skye Bank MD further stated that the bank has done a lot in individual donations, the education sector and towards the public and private agencies. “What we do in social corporate responsibility is that everything is done quietly between us and the people we do it for,” he said.

Quality services

Yusuf dilated on the quality services provided by the bank, saying they ensure close customer-bank relationship, and introduced internal money transfer along the West African Coast. He intimated that they will soon have an international system which is going to support the hospitality industry, saying 40 percent of their loan exposure is in the small business group as of today and the larger numbers are happy about it.