Dear stakeholders,
On a global basis, the second quarter of 2024 was completed with geopolitical risks, elections, economic growth indicators and especially the course of inflation being on the agenda, with expectations that central banks may start interest rate cuts within the year within the framework of all developments. In general, the growth rates of developed countries' economies continued their slow course. Although the US Federal Reserve (Fed) monetary policy did not change the interest rate, the European Central Bank (ECB) made a small interest rate cut. Despite this difference, both central banks announced that they would be cautious about disinflation unless they were more confident.
We see the positive results of the monetary and fiscal policies implemented in our country as improvements in indicators such as CDS, credit scores, reserves, foreign capital flow and current account balance. Similar to the global economy, expectations for disinflation are more positive for the second half of the year.
The banking sector continues to contribute to our economy in line with the implemented monetary and fiscal policies. Ziraat Bank maintains its credit-oriented balance sheet structure by diversifying its main funding source, deposits, with non-deposit resources, especially from abroad, and by focusing on the financing of the real sector, supporting agriculture, exports, investment, employment and SME areas.
Ziraat Bank's total assets exceeded TL 4,5 trillion. Cash loans, which constitute more than half of the assets, are at the level of TL 2,3 trillion. As a result of our credit policy focused on financing the real sector, 85% of cash loans consist of corporate / commercial loans. 65% of our loans consist of TL loans and 76% of these loans are aimed at financing the real sector.
By designing special new products, we prioritize the financing of selective areas. One of these areas is the financing of agriculture. In the agricultural sector, we provide effective financing in all areas of agriculture with the loan packages we design, such as plant and animal production, aquaculture and beekeeping, modern and solar-powered irrigation systems, agricultural mechanization, young farmers, women farmers, cooperatives and contract production. Our loans for financing agriculture have reached TL 490 billion and the number of loan customers has approached 1 million people. 30% of our agricultural loans consist of investment loans. We aim to increase the added value of agriculture by reducing imports of agricultural products, encouraging domestic production, increasing mechanization and agricultural investments, using technology more effectively, and bringing agricultural enterprises to economic scale.
Apart from agriculture, we offered support packages to our customers for the financing of exports, which are of strategic importance for our country. We also implemented support packages for women and youth.
Although our main source of financing is deposits, we obtain non-deposit resources, especially from abroad, and use these resources to finance the real sector. While we renewed our syndicated loan by 132%, we issued 500 million USD subordinated bonds. Apart from these, we also obtained resources within the scope of the program based on post financing, foreign currency repo, bilateral agreements from foreign banks and remittance flows, thus increasing the total amount of resources we provided from abroad to USD 15 billion.
As the bank with the most widespread branch network in the sector, we continue our investments in these areas to make it possible to access financial services conveniently and easily everywhere. Our Bank, which is the leader of the sector in terms of ATM network, has started to provide services to our customers at many more points with "Türkiye's ATM Center - TAM", which combines 6 banks and PTT ATMs under one roof. We continue our investments in digital banking and payment systems. The number of active digital banking customers has exceeded 22,4 million people and the share of non-branch financial transactions in total has reached approximately 96,1%. The number of customers in our bank's digital branch, Super Branch, has reached 1 million. We maintain our position as the leading bank in the field of debit cards. We are increasing our member merchant and credit card market share.
Our Bank, which has the most widespread service network abroad, operates at 122 points in 19 different countries, as well as in Türkiye, with a deep-rooted history of over 160 years, with an international asset size of approximately USD 12 billion. Expanding its global service network with our Egypt Representative Office, which started operating in July, our Bank will increase its effectiveness in the Gulf region with our Dubai Representative Office, which will start operating soon.
Our bank rapidly continues its work on banking activities in new geographies in line with its strategy of being a part of mutual investments between Türkiye and the countries in which we operate and increasing its effectiveness in financing foreign trade.
We continue our work with the aim to offer solutions suitable for different financial needs with domestic and international service points and digital banking applications, to achieve this with an efficiency-oriented approach, to ensure that our customers can easily access our services everywhere, to increase customer satisfaction, to place the resources we provide in the right areas in a way that will provide the highest added value to our economy.
Alpaslan ÇAKAR
General Manager
