The long term foreign currency ratings of the Oman’s leading bank, Oman International Bank (OIB) were recently upgraded by Capital Intelligence (CI).

Capital Intelligence is the leading credit rating agency in the world’s emerging markets specialising in the analysis of counterparty credit risk of financial institutions.

According to the rating, it has raised OIB’s foreign currency long term and short term ratings to BBB+ and A2 respectively.

The bank’s results showed improvement on the back of strong recoveries and provision write backs. All other financial ratios in the year were good because of which a stable outlook has been assigned to all ratings.

The ratings reflect CI’s increased confidence for the local banking sector. The financial strength is affirmed at BBB.

The ratings reflect the bank’s sizeable retail customer franchise, good liquidity, high capital adequacy ratio and sound earnings profile.

Oman International Bank was established in 1984. With total assets of $2.59bn at the end of 2009, it is one of the premier banks in the country. The bank has the second largest branch network in Oman with 83 branches.-TradeArabia News Service