By Sinead Cruise and Lawrence White

LONDON (Reuters) -The chair of NatWest Group said on Wednesday its upcoming exit from state ownership represented an "inflection point" for the bank, and that it plans to focus on growth after a near 66% rise in its share price in the last year.

NatWest is poised to return to full private ownership in the coming weeks some 17 years after its 45 billion pound ($59.85 billion) state rescue. Despite recent gains, its 473 pence share price is still shy of the 502 pence per share bailout price, leaving the government facing a multi-billion pound loss.

Speaking at the bank's annual shareholder meeting in Edinburgh on Wednesday, Chairman Rick Haythornthwaite said: "We have fixed the issues of the past and have scale and presence in communities around the country to leverage our balance sheet by lending to our customers and driving economic growth."

He thanked Britain's taxpayers and the government for the role they played in keeping the lender afloat in the 2008/9 financial crisis.

"We remain incredibly grateful to the government, and to UK taxpayers, for their intervention and support, which protected millions of savers, homeowners and businesses at a time of global crisis," he said.

Britain sold its last remaining stake in rival UK lender and fellow crisis casualty Lloyds Banking Group in May 2017, making a profit of about 900 million pounds after spending more than 20 billion pounds on its rescue.

CRISIS ERA EXCESS

The bank's annual shareholder meeting took place at its Gogarburn headquarters to the west of Edinburgh, a building that opened in 2005 at a cost of 250 million pounds, and which later became a symbol for its reckless expansion under former CEO Fred Goodwin.

Under Goodwin's stewardship, the bank which then traded as Royal Bank of Scotland grew through a string of acquisitions to a balance sheet of over 2 trillion pounds by 2008, more than double the size of Britain's economic output at the time.

The lender's focus is now on growing its core domestic business, CEO Paul Thwaite said, as well as supporting the Labour government's growth agenda.

($1 = 0.7519 pounds)

(Reporting By Sinead Cruise and Lawrence White; Editing by Jan Harvey)