By Jesús Aguado

MADRID, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Spanish bank BBVA expects to pay a significantly higher dividend for 2023 than the 0.43 euros per share paid in 2022 as credit growth is boosting profits, Chairman Carlos Torres said in a message on the Spanish bank's website on Monday.

"With a growing profit, a shrinking share count and a steady dividend policy -- payout of between 40% and 50% of profit -- we see the dividend per share growing year on year," he said.

"We expect the dividend per share we pay to our shareholders for the 2023 financial year to be clearly higher than in the previous year," he added.

In October, the bank paid an interim dividend on 2023 earnings of €0.16, an increase of 33.3% over the interim dividend paid in October 2022.

The bank's dividend policy comprises two cash payments--one interim and one final--plus a share buyback program.

The bank completed its latest €1 billion ($1.1 billion) share buyback program at the end of November 2023.

The interim dividend was supported by a net profit of €3.88 billion in the first half of 2023 thanks to higher loan income in Mexico, its main market, and Spain.

Spanish banks have benefited from higher financial margins that will help them post record profits throughout 2023. Spanish banks focus mainly on the retail sector, which means they tend to benefit more from higher interest rates than other eurozone banks.

Analysts expect BBVA's net profit in 2023 to amount to €7.84 billion, according to data from Refinitiv.

In 2022, Spain's second-largest bank by market value posted a net profit of €6.42 billion.

By 2024, Torres expects the growth of BBVA's banking activities to continue, after adding 11 million new customers in the last 12 months.

"That has led us to increase lending, which was growing at 8% as of September," he said.

(1 dollar = 0.9123 euros)

(Reporting by Jesús Aguado; editing by Emma Pinedo and Sharon Singleton; Spanish edition by Tomás Cobos)