Let’s go local!

Portia Mlilo
HAPPY MAN: Aupa Monyatsi

Although 2022 proved to be a slightly tricky year for Letshego Group, with the company’s profit before tax dropping from P1. 15 billion to P801 million – a fall of 30 percent – the group’s Botswana base once again excelled.

Boasting a footprint that now stretches across 11 African countries, locally the financial service giant saw its profits before tax go up by 14 percent.

This was the good news shared by Letshego Group Chief Executive, Aupa Monyatsi, when giving an update on the company’s 2022 full year financial results in Gaborone last Thursday.

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While he didn’t reveal precisely how much the Botswana operations had made, Monyatsi noted shareholders’ return on equity stood at over 20 percent, which is above most financial service companies in the country.

Reflecting on the company’s performance over the year, he pointed to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which saw interest rates increase in every single market that Letshego operates in.

Monyatsi said the banks also increased the rates on the loans Letshego already has with them. To protect their customers, Letshego ended up absorbing the difference themselves.

The Chief Executive further noted this played out at the same time as central banks increased interest rates to manage inflation.

“By mid-year in Ghana for example, inflation in June 2022 was at 29.8 percent, so you can imagine how tough it was in an economy like that. At the end of it all, the macro economic factors affected different markets at different levels. Letshego also had some leadership changes both at the board and executive level so the efforts as the management was to ensure that we spend time stabilising the organisation post the leadership changes. It was a success and we gave assurance to our investors, our regulators and funders,” declared Monyatsi.

Other notable highlights included the performance of Faidika in Tanzania, where profits before tax jumped up 44 percent to P53.6 million.

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Under new management, Nigeria also bounced back well in 2022, moving from a position of loss the previous year to rake in profit before tax of P23.5 million.

Rwanda also enjoyed some success, recording yet-to-be-taxed profits of P1.8 million after successive years of breaking even.

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