A new in­ter­na­tional bank has been launched in Mo­gadishu, a lat­est sign of life in the city af­ter more than two decades of civil war which en­gulfed the bright lights of the town, mak­ing it one of the most dan­ger­ous on earth.

The com­mence­ment of this new idea has been out of the ques­tion with­out the frag­ile tran­quil­ity that cul­mi­nated in the ab­sence of Al-Shabab af­ter the mil­i­tants with­drew Mo­gadishu three years ago when AU peace keep­ing force of­fen­sive weak­ened their grip on power.

A col­or­ful cer­e­mony in­di­cat­ing the of­fi­cial rib­bon cut­ting of Pre­mier bank has been held in its six story build­ing near Mo­gadishu’s K4 junc­tion in Mo­gadishu with the se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in­clud­ing pres­i­dent Mo­hamud in at­ten­dance.

Three Years ago the lo­cale of the bank was a bul­let charred trench used by So­mali gov­ern­ment forces to pro­tect them­selves from Al-Shabab at­tacks but now you could see lights twin­kling in the tower adding a touch of glam­our and amuse­ment to the build­ing.

Pre­mier bank di­rec­tor Ma­had Ahmed told the au­di­ence dur­ing the cer­e­mony that his bank of­fers com­pre­hen­sive one-stop fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions to cus­tomers who in­clude both pri­vate and gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions, cor­po­rate, Small and medium-sized en­ter­prises and in­di­vid­u­als in the coun­try.

“Pre­mier bank be­lieves in the promise of a new So­ma­lia and that we all have a role to play in re­build­ing in the coun­try”
Ahmed em­pha­sized that ser­vice de­liv­ery was one their key pil­lars and that is why they have part­nered with Mas­ter­Card and swift to bring these global ser­vices to the peo­ple of So­ma­lia.

So­ma­li­a’s cen­tral bank gov­er­nor Bashir Isse Ali who also de­liv­ered speech dur­ing the cer­e­mony said that so­ma­lia is fi­nally ris­ing from the ashes, with the launch of such clas­sic bank in a coun­try that has plagued vi­o­lence and an­ar­chy for more than two decades gives a glim­mer of hope to many who have never dared dream that peace would come so soon to So­ma­lia.

So­mali pres­i­dent who spoke at the func­tion said that So­ma­lia is fi­nally stand­ing on its own feet as his coun­try de­cides to make the best of the bad job by heal­ing the wounds caused by the civil war Mr Mo­hamud cited as the coun­try emerges from the civil war his gov­ern­ment is urg­ing cit­i­zens to in­vest money in or­der for them to be able to im­prove the eco­nomic cli­mate in the coun­try” “My gov­ern­ment dubs this year ( 2015) as the year eco­nomic growth to be cre­ated in the county and to avoid fac­tors that hin­der eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment” Pres­i­dent Mo­hamud said.

The coun­try’s econ­omy has al­ways in ex­tremely dire straits due to civil un­rest but both wealthy lo­cal and in­ter­na­tional busi­ness­men have be­gun to take the plunge as they started busi­ness in the war torn cap­i­tal de­spite ex­plo­sions and some­times tar­geted as­sas­si­na­tion that rou­tinely takes place in the cap­i­tal Mo­gadishu.

The open­ing of the new bank co­in­cides at a time Kenyan gov­ern­ment frozen most of long-stood Hawalat com­pa­nies op­er­at­ing in its coun­try in an ef­fort to crack down an in­for­mal re­mit­tance net­work that trans­fers cash with­out any records of the par­ties in­volved.

The Pre­mier Bank hopes to change all this with their new for­ward-think­ing pro­ject to help the cus­tomers in or­der for them to send and get their money safely

The Pre­mier Bank is the sec­ond in­ter­na­tional bank that has launched op­er­a­tions in Mo­gadishu af­ter In­ter­na­tional Bank of So­ma­lia which is the first So­mali Bank that has a swift code un­like its com­peti­tors.

Ac­cord­ing to the bank man­ager, it is a fully fledged Is­lamic bank li­censed and reg­u­lated by So­ma­li­a’s cen­tral bank in Mo­gadishu. The ban has two branches on Mo­gadishu’s k4 junc­tion and the main Bakara mar­ket.