JAKARTA. PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk. remain cautious in distributing credit, despite the fact that Pefindo's assessment for credit risk of the bank is better.
Finance Director of BRI, Haru Koesmahargyo said that as an intermediary institution, banks must continue to push its credit growth. Although the Pefindo gives a positive signal, BRI claims to remain cautious because global conditions are still down due to the coronavirus spread.
BRI sees the banking industry still has to be careful in lending. Even though the industry's loan at risk (LaR) rate has dropped (from 9.8% in 2018 to 9.1% in 2019), the ratio of non-performing loans (NPL) is still high at 2.53% as of 2019.
"Banks must increase efforts to improve credit quality through restructuring, intensive collection and credit settlement," he said as quoted by Bisnis on Wednesday (4/3).
Haru said BRI will focus on the MSME segment because the risk was very low. According to him, there is still room for an increase in credit to existing customers, because the potential of the existing debtors' businesses is still quite large. "We are confident the credit growth target of 9-10% by the end of this year can be achieved. We are also optimistic that the NPL can be maintained," he said. (AM/AR)