Kazakh bank CenterCredit 2007 profit up 44 pct

ALMATY, April 14 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan's sixth-largest bank CenterCredit CCBN.KZ said on Monday its 2007 net profit rose 44 percent to 14.5 billion tenge ($120 million), but projected a slowdown in asset growth this year.

South Korea's Kookmin Bank 060000.KS agreed last month to buy 30 percent of CenterCredit for $634 million and pledged to increase its stake to 50.1 percent within the next 30 months.

CenterCredit's assets grew 54 percent in 2007, but the bank sees much slower growth in 2008 in the aftermath of the global liquidity squeeze.

"For 2008 the growth will be 10 to 15 percent," Managing Director Timur Ishmuratov told a conference call.

The liquidity crunch triggered by the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown has hit the Kazakh economy hard and made open-market borrowing a challenge for Kazakh banks.

Ishmuratov said his bank had chosen to focus on state-owned and multilateral lenders such as Germany's DEG, the Asian Development bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development [EBRD.UL] and the International Financial Corporation to meet its funding needs this year.

"We are in the process of negotiations with many financial institutions ... we have issued mandates for $500 million," he said.

Ishmuratov said CenterCredit was confident about its asset quality. Non-performing loans accounted for about 1 percent of total loans at the end of 2007, he said.

"We don't expect any significant deterioration of our loan portfolio," Ishmuratov said. (Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Quentin Bryar)