Barclays Bank Ghana’s half year Profit After Tax witnessed a little over 100 percent jump. This was contained in the bank’s half year financial statement released today. Barclays also made some appreciable gains in its interest earnings. Provisions for bad debt shot by 73 percent but Managing Director, Benjamin Dabrah tells JOYBUSINESS this does not necessarily mean the loans will go bad. “The figure does not necessarily reflect a worsening impairment charge for the year. In any case if you take that impairment figure in question on the balance and express it as a percentage of the growth in customer loans, the percentage of provisioning is les than 5 percent and that pretty good for a bank. When we publish the full results with full disclosure and notes you’ll see that the topline charge is not that different. Where the difference comes in I that there was a lot more releases from previous impairment charges last year that there is this year” he explained. Barclays Bank last year stood out the most profitable, but Mr. Dabrah says this might not be the case this year. “The landscape has changed with a number of mergers and acquisitions in the markets. So we might not necessarily end up as the best bank but we believe we’ll post very good results” he added. The half year results put the stated capital of Barclays Bank at 115 Ghana cedis and total asset of almost 2 billion cedis. In separate development, Access Bank also saw its profits go up by almost four folds to a little over 20 million on the back of strong growth in its interest earnings. This follows its merger with Intercontinental Bank earlier this year. The loans that it expects to go bad however went up increase substantially by 588 percent.