The Determinants of Private Commercial Banks Profitability: In the Case of Selected Ethiopian Private Banks

The main objective of the paper is to analyze the impact of bank specific and macro-economic factors on the profitability of selected Ethiopian private commercial banks over the period of 2005 to 2014. To meet the objective, both descriptive and random effect panel econometrics method of data analysis has been employed. The study uses both return on asset (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) as a measurement for banks profitability. Private Banks profit after tax gets increasing year after year and their ROA is found to be three percent on average. The deposit share of private commercial banks reached above 30 percent in 2014, while it was only 10 percent in 2000. The panel econometrics result shows that, the variable bank size and GDP growth rate has a positive and significant impact on private commercial banks ROA and ROE. While, interest rate spread has a negative and significant impact. The variable Loan to deposit ratio has negative and significant impact on banks ROA while, it has no effect on their ROE. Inflation also an important variable in explaining ROA at 10% significant level but, it has no effect on ROE. The other important variable in explaining ROE is loan concentration index it has positive and significant impact on banks ROE. But, it does not significantly explain ROA. As a recommendation the significant and positive impact of Bank size can be taken as a good signal for commercial banks to merge and to have scale advantage. The significant impact of macro-economic variables in explaining banks profit is an indicator to designed policies that promote sustainable output growth and controlling inflation to have stable banking sector.