Nama posts €200m profit in accounts

THE NATIONAL Asset Management Agency set aside €810 million as an impairment charge in the agency’s unaudited accounts for 2011, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has told the Dáil.

Based on the unaudited accounts, the agency made a net profit of about €200 million in 2011 after the charge, which reflected a further decline in property values last year, as values have continued to fall since the bank loans were valued in November 2009.

A Nama spokesman declined to comment on the figures. The management accounts were handed over to the Minister by the agency in recent weeks. The management accounts reflect the State agency’s financial performance before the results are signed off by the comptroller and auditor general.

The impairment charge increased from about €1 billion in last year’s management accounts to €1.485 billion in the audited accounts, leaving the State agency with a loss of €1.18 billion in 2010, based on the published accounts.

Commercial property values have fallen by 22 per cent since Nama valued at €32 billion loans with a face value of €74 billion for their purchase from five financial institutions. Values have fallen 65 per cent since 2007.

Nama was set up by the Government in 2009 to purge the banks of toxic property loans, the most loss-making of which were advanced for speculative land purchases and development.