Troubled mortgage lender Amlak Finance posted a net loss of 135.1 million dirhams ($36.78 million) in the first half of the year, as revenue fell and writedowns weighed, the company said.

Revenue on fees, investment gains, and property sales fell at the company, one of the biggest mortgage lenders in the Gulf, while impairments on 'financing and investment assets' rose sharply, the company said in a statement on the bourse website.

Impairments of financing and investing assets in the first half of 2009 soared to 140 million dirhams from 8.5 million dirhams in the year-ago period, according to the statement.

Amlak shares have been suspended since late last year pending an emergency merger with ailing rival Tamweel.

Amlak and Tamweel were both paralysed by the property collapse that hit Dubai last year. Since then, their fate has been under review by a federal steering committee charged with merging the two firms together with two other state-controlled banks.-Reuters