SIF Muntenia posted an income of 83.78 million RON (23.67 million euro) in the first half of the year, over three times higher than the net profit from the same time last year.

The company's profit is at the same time 30% higher than the net profit budgeted for the entire year. Another two SIFs, Oltenia and Banat-Crisana in turn posted higher six-month profits than budgeted for the entire year.

SIF Muntenia ranks second among financial investment companies in terms of the first half profit. The highest net income at the end of June was that of SIF Oltenia, which had made 91.5 million RON (25.8 million euros) income.

The profit the company posted is 39.7% higher than at the end of May, with the growth largely due to the dividends the SIF collected from BCR last month. Five months into the year, SIF Muntenia's profit stood at 59.96 million RON (16.9 million euros).

"We believe the six-month results to be very good. The difference compared with the end of the month is largely due to the 20 million RON (5.6 million euros) dividends from BCR we collected last month," specified Petre Szel, chairman of Muntenia Invest, the company that manages SIF Muntenia.

Szel, however, stressed that the results were only preliminary figures and could subsequently be somewhat different from the final results, which are to be presented in mid August.

"The results are preliminary. They are to go through an auditing process and the final results could see some changes," Szel specified.

The company made most of its profit early in the year, when it sold its 10% stake in pharmaceutical company Sicomed, for more than 15 million euros.

This sale allowed SIF Muntenia to post a 56.86 million RON (15.6 million euros) profit. The company later sold 2% in pharmaceutical company Biofarm Bucharest for 4.5 million RON (over 1.2 million euros) in Februa