FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - After a year marked by crisis aid, development bank KfW expects its business to return to normal in 2023. Last year, the state-owned institution's promotional volume of 166.9 billion euros significantly exceeded the record of the Corona crisis year 2020 (135.3 billion euros), as the banking group announced on Tuesday. In 2021, the combined domestic and foreign funding total was 107 billion euros.

"2022 was an exceptional year for KfW, a record for funding, a gigantic figure. I do not believe that this figure will be repeated in the same amount," said KfW CEO Stefan Wintels. Historically, he said, KfW's promotional volume has been in a corridor of 70 billion to 80 billion euros. "That is an order of magnitude we are very comfortable with." Last year, KfW "definitely did not exceed any limits, but there are limits with IT, there are limits with staff," Wintels said.

In Germany, he said, the transformation toward sustainability and digitalization has begun. "After the year of crisis management, our focus in 2023 will be above all on helping people, entrepreneurs and also local authorities to drive this structural change forward," Wintels said. "It's a matter of putting the focus back on market forces after the crisis has been overcome." However, due to the uncertainty, he said, it cannot be ruled out that KfW will also be challenged this year by special measures.

Last year, the sums decided by the federal government to secure energy supplies and ease the burden on households and companies in particular caused the volume of funding to skyrocket. 58.3 billion euros came together at KfW, which is 80 percent owned by the federal government and 20 percent by the federal states, for so-called allocation transactions in connection with the energy crisis.

KfW, which has been in existence for 75 years this year, has, for example, provided billions of euros in aid to Germany's largest gas importer, Uniper, which ran into difficulties as a result of the Russian attack on Ukraine because Russia no longer supplies gas to Germany. The development bank also participated in the financing of the new terminal for the import of liquefied natural gas in Brunsbüttel, Schleswig-Holstein, on behalf of the German government.

But there was also strong demand for the institute's traditional support for SMEs, house builders and students, for example. At 37.4 billion euros, for example, federal support for efficient buildings accounted for a good quarter of domestic support. Overall, the domestic share of total funding amounted to 136.1 billion euros (previous year: 82.9 billion euros).

Because KfW also set aside more money for possible loan defaults in view of the uncertain economic situation, the promotional bank's profit in 2022 is likely to have been lower than a year earlier. At the end of September, the bank's books showed a consolidated profit of 993 million euros, just over half the figure for the same period last year. In 2021 as a whole, the development bank had achieved a surplus of a good 2.2 billion euros. KfW plans to comment on its business figures for 2022 on March 31./ben/DP/ngu