NICOSIA, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Bank of Cyprus (BOC), the bailed-out island's primary lender, posted a net loss of 554 million euros (666 million U.S. dollars) on Tuesday for the first six months of the year, on account of an increase in provisions for non-performing loans.
BOC said in a statement posted on the Cyprus Stock Exchange website that this compared with a profit of 54 million euros during the same period of 2016.
It announced that it had increased its provisions for loan impairments to 727 million euros -- 614 million euros in the second quarter and 113 million euros in the first quarter -- compared with a provision totaling 180 million euros in the respective period of 2016.
BOC, like all other Cypriot banks, was hit by a wave of non-performing loans after it was resolved in March 2013, as part of Cyprus's 10-billion-euro bail-out by the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The lender was forced to seize 47.5 percent of uninsured deposits over 100,000 euros to recapitalize, thus introducing the term "bail-in" to monetary terminology.
The bank's traditional owners, mostly local institutions and individuals, were succeeded by its creditors, who were mostly Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
BOC said that bad loans dropped at the end of June to 9.8 billion euros, representing 50 percent of its total loan portfolio.
The bank's Irish chief executive, John Hourican, said in a statement that despite the posted loss, the lender was making "steady progress in its journey back to full strength."
He vowed to crack down on what he called deliberate defaulters in repaying their loans, by resorting to "a potential sell-down of delinquent loans."
He said the board made a deliberate decision to allocate an increase provision for bad loans so as to further accelerate risk reduction.
"We expect to continue to utilize the operating profit of the bank in the remainder of 2017 for further balance sheet de-risking...to be in a position to present a more normal credit cycle charge," he added.
He said the growth of the Cypriot economy by 3.5 percent in the second quarter this year is expected to help the bank's operations. (1 euro = 1.20 U.S. dollars)
