BRI Is Flooded With Liquidity, MSMEs Needing Loans Please Come

President Director of BRI Sunarso. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk or BRI will increase the portion of credit for the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. In this way, BRI can contribute to driving economic performance.

BRI President Director Sunarso said there was still room for BRI to expand credit in line with BRI's Loan to Deposit Ratio (LDR) which currently stands at 83 percent. BRI's capital ratio is also quite large, reaching 25.28 percent or three times above the threshold set by Bank Indonesia (BI).

Moreover, BRI recently obtained additional capital through a rights issue process of IDR 41 trillion.

"With the transformation strategy in the BRIVolution 2.0 blueprint that BRI is currently running, we are optimistic that the portion of MSME loans in the company can reach 85 percent by 2024," said Sunarso in a statement quoted by Antara, Thursday, February 17.

For information, the portion of BRI's MSME loans has reached 83.86 percent.

Sunarso said, from a liquidity and capital perspective, BRI has the opportunity and has the ability to grow aggressively. But the problem is, BRI is still looking at how credit requests from MSME actors are.

As is known, the MSME sector has become the government's attention in line with the national MSME loan distribution target in the banking sector of up to 30 percent of the total financing of IDR 1.800 trillion.

Previously, the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto encouraged an increase in national MSME loans, in line with the improvement in the demand side in the sector.

He also hopes that the capital aspect of MSMEs, whose portion has only touched 18.4 percent or IDR 1.200 trillion, can increase through the contribution and capability of BRI, which has experience in disbursing capital and empowering Indonesian MSMEs.

"We see that BRI is the one that provides large loans to the MSME sector. Because not all banks concentrate on small and medium enterprises, so from the government's perspective, the aggregate may be important. Because we don't see that all is one size fit for all, but the government's target is the total aggregate," he said.