BRI Boss Says Removing MSME Traffic Credit Doesn't Affect The Company

Bank BRI (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - President Director of PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (BBRI), Sunarso opened his voice regarding the policy of eliminating MSME bad loans. As is known, President Joko Widodo will abolish MSME bad credit. This has been stated in Law Number 4 of 2023 concerning the Development and Strengthening of the Financial Sector (PPSK).

According to Sunarso, the implementation of this policy does not affect the company's performance.

"All banks including Himbara Bank (State Bank Association) have deleted books on bad loans for a long time," Sunarso said at a press conference in Jakarta, Wednesday, August 30.

He emphasized that with or without this policy, his company had indeed implemented the policy for a long time. What is feared, he said, is that this policy will actually cause moral hazard.

Not only that, according to Sunarso, the costs incurred to collect bad credit customers are greater than the funds collected.

"There are provisions that you can delete them again or not, it doesn't matter because what has been deleted by the book, if you can't pay, then we can't collect it because the effort to collect is greater than the bill. Why did it do it?" explained Sunarso.

He considered that this policy was also aimed at the interests of people who wanted to return to making loans after being hit by a disaster.

For information, until the end of the second quarter of 2023, BRI managed to disburse loans and financing worth Rp1,202.13 trillion with the main support for growth, namely in the micro segment which grew 11.41 percent yoy to Rp577.94 trillion.

Thus, the portion of microcredit has reached 48.08 percent of BRI's total credit distribution.

The double-digit distribution of microcredit has also continued to increase the proportion of BRI's MSME loans. Until the end of the second quarter of 2023, 84.48 percent of BRI's total credit or Rp1,015.54 trillion was credit channeled to the MSME segment.