Never Letting Facts Ruin a Good Story: Business Daily Edition

Whenever the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) published the quarterly Credit Officer Survey, the expectations is that it is meant to inform in totality the dynamics around the banks core asset that credit is. Trust the business media largely, and those that appear to have a hypothesis to prove that the banking industry will do everything to make 'unjustifiably high profit' even if at the expense of dragging the economy to hell.
I can understand if it is a pedestrian publication printed on an A4 paper. But hey, these Mickey Mouse publications have competition from respectable quarters such as the Business Daily.
I know that there is a newspaper to sell, so the trick is: make it as sexy as possible. So the core message that the Business Daily gets from the latest Credit Officer Survey for the period January - December 2014 is that 'Banks defy new loan pricing tool to rake in Sh141 billion profit'.
The instructive words in this angle of pseudo analysis are: defy - meaning refuse to comply with the regulator's requirement; profit - which all other businesses but banks are supposed to make.
It doesn't matter that the same Business Daily indicates that the profit is as a result of fast growth in credit to the real economy, whose rate of growth for the period under discussion is the fastest in the past four years.
It doesn't matter either that the same edition Business Daily has a story to the effect that Kenyan banks have tough lending conditions, an attribute that speaks to the search for stability in the financial system.
Here is a couple of other facts in the Credit Officer Survey that the CBK prominently puts in the foreword, but with the Business Daily ignores:

• One, deposits grew by almost 18 percent from Shs1.98 trillion to Shs2.33 trillion. This means that banks are furthering the inter-mediation mandate effectively.
• Two, the total shareholders' funds grew by 22.5 percent from Shs431 billion to Shs530.09 billion. This, by the way is faster than the 13.47 percent growth in profit for the corresponding period. This means that investors in the banking industry are staking more resources and therefore the profit that is being portrayed as 'super' may end up being modest is one was to wear an objective hat.
• Three, the growth of interest expenses on deposits by 24.03 percent is faster than the growth in interest income that grew by 16.29 percent. This means that the portrayal of banks as profiteering from the misery of depositors is simply a figment of prejudiced imagination.

 But then, these are mere facts. Whom in the Business Daily will let facts ruin a good story? Well, nobody I presume.