•  The number of branches at the end of June 2009 stood at 930 an increase of 158 branches from the corresponding period in 2008. •  The number of accounts has similarly increased to 6.7m accounts from around 4 million accounts in the same period – shows we need to do more on this count.
Economic growth for 2008 stood at 5.0 per cent, slightly below the 2007 level of 5.5 per cent. At the beginning of this year, it appeared that our GDP growth rate would be closer to 2 per cent.