Barita Investments’ bottom line took a huge hit from the National Debt Exchange (NDX), with the company posting $98 million in losses for the six months ended March 2013.

The firm said its performance was severely impacted by the NDX implemented in February 2013.

“The impact of our participation in this initiative, amounted to write offs of $240 million,” the investment company said.

Without the impact of the National Debt Exchange, the performance of the company would have surpassed its prior year to date performance.

Despite this write off, the performance of the company was sterling, with the main drivers of this performance being dividend income, foreign exchange trading and translation gains and unit trust operations, Barita said.

Though its expenses increased by $4.4 million for the three months ending March 2013, the company said cost savings in the curtailment of expenses contributed positively to the bottom line.

Barita continues the diversification of its revenue streams, increasing its product offerings and growing non-interest income.

“This push in building our non-interest income was the result of Barita Unit Trusts Management Company recording significant improvements in our top and bottom line performances, where revenues grew by 15 per cent and profits increased by 20 per cent for the quarter,” the company said.

Barita’s asset base showed a $1.5 billion or 10 per cent decrease over prior year, from $14.2 billion to $12.7 billion, while liabilities also decreased by $1.1 billion.

The NDX aims to lower the Government’s annual finance costs by $17 billion, shaving an average of two percentage points off interest rates on $860 billion of the country’s domestic debt.