Still 15.1 Percent, BRI Target Loan At Risk Returns Single Digit In 2025

Bank BRI (photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (BBRI) targets the company's restructured credit to return to single digits from the total number of credit portfolios by 2025, or the same as before the crisis caused by the pandemic hit.

BRI Director of Risk Management Agus Sudiarto explained that accumulatively BRI credit was restructured because the highest pandemic reached 30 percent of the total credit portfolio, which peaked around September 2020 with a value of more than IDR 250 trillion.

"Alhamdulillah, currently it has decreased considerably. June 2023's position is only around Rp. 83.2 trillion or about 7.64 percent of BRI's total credit. So every month we drop between Rp. 3 trillion to Rp. 5 trillion. Hopefully we can manage the rest until the end of this year. We hope that this portion can continue to fall until the Loan at Risk (LAR) BRI ratio can return from 15.1 percent this June to single digits. Maybe we will get it at the end of next year or 2025," he said in a statement to the media, Thursday, July 20.

Nevertheless, to strengthen conditions that are getting better, Agus revealed that his party implemented a conservative strategy by allocating more than adequate reserves as a risk mitigation.

Meanwhile, BRI's NPL coverage during the pandemic period reached 247.98 percent in 2020, or rose to 278.14 percent in 2021. In 2022 the percentage was increased to 291.54 percent. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2023 it was 268.93 percent.

"So 2020, 2021 to 2022, we at BRI are indeed making very conservative mitigation efforts. Where our reserves are sufficient so that compared to pre-pandemic positions the increase is quite significant," he continued.

This also controls the cost of credit, which usually before the pandemic only reached around 2 percent to 3 percent during the pandemic. As for this year, the company projects that the cost of credit will start to fall and be in the range of 2.2-2.4 percent.

According to Agus, although the current condition of the national banking industry is better and BRI's cost of credit has begun to decline after being hit by the pandemic, the company's management continues to provide conservative reserves.

"BRI does not want to ignore the economic conditions at the global level which are still full of uncertainty," concluded Agus.