KAMPALA, March 31 (Reuters) – Uganda’s biggest lender, Stanbic, posted an 8.9% decline in its pretax profit as the impact of the coronavirus crisis drove up impairments.

The lender, which is a unit of South Africa’s Standard Bank , said it had set aside more cash to cover the loan impairments, driving down the profit to 316.6 billion shillings ($86.50 million).

Provisions for bad debts rose 110% to 91.8 billion shillings, the bank said.

Stanbic restructured loans worth 800 billion shillings last year after the central bank allowed commercial lenders to change repayment terms for borrowers who found it hard to repay their loans due to the pandemic.

($1 = 3,660.0000 Ugandan shillings) (Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Duncan Miriri and Louise Heavens)

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