By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-Nigeria’s top tier lender, Diamond Bank Plc on Wednesday said is planning a minimal loan growth of not more than 10 percent, a Reuters report quoted Abdulrahman Yinusa, the chief financial officer (CFO) of the Bank.

The report quoted Yinusa in Reuters Africa Investment Summit that overall loan growth would slow this year compared with last year.

According to him, the bank will release its results soon when it will say how much its loan book grew in 2014.

“Loan growth is going to be very minimal, we don’t see anything more than 10 percent,” he said.

The bank said the move is to build up cash reserves to ride out a slowdown in the economy that will depress lending after a sharp drop in global oil prices and the weakening naira.

The report noted that Nigeria expects to lower its forecast for 2015 economic growth again, after cutting its forecast to 5.54 percent in January, as oil prices fell and the naira weakened further last month.

The Diamond Banks CFO further disclosed that it planned to increase its holding of government bonds, where yields are at around 15 percent.

“Government bonds accounted for 35-40 percent of assets, which is expected to grow to 45 percent this year, he added.

“Our philosophy for 2015 is to put cash first. Liquidity is the first order of priority and … then conservative lending,” Yinusa was quoted as saying.

He also expected half of its deposits to come from consumers over the three-year period, up from 40 percent now.

In the same vein, he expected return on equity (ROE) to fall this year to 15 percent, after it sold shares last year. But ROE would climb back above 20 percent by 2017.

Yinusa affirmed that he expected the naira to trade at 200 to the dollar by year-end, as pressure on the currency was expected to ease after a presidential election in three weeks time.

“But the currency could fall to between 220-230 to the dollar if the outcome of the elections brought violence,” Yinusa added.

Shares in the bank are down 23.5 percent so far this year and as the end of Wednesday’s session on the Nigerian bourse shares of the bank inched up 0.01 percent to N4.27 from N4.28.