Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Publicly listed state lender PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk (BRI) reported a net profit of Rp18.623 trillion in the first nine months of the year or an increase of 1.8 percent year-on-year.

BRI President Director Asmawi Syam attributed the increase in profit to 16.8 percent rise in net interest income (NII) to Rp48.579 trillion in the same period.

"Another driver of the increase was fee based income that reached Rp6.6 trillion or an increase of 25.9 percent year-on-year," Asmawi said.

He said the increase in net interest income was attributable to 16.3 percent rise in its outstanding credits to Rp603.5 trillion - well above the average 6.8 percent growth of the industry.

"Micro credits , which have been the core credit business of BRI are still the main driver for the bank credit growth," he said.

He said BRI micro credits by the end of the first nine months of the year totaled Rp204.8 trillion o an increase of 20.3 percent year=on-year.

The increase in credits was in line with the rise in the number of clients among SMEs from 7.6 million to 8.6 million.

He said the total value of BRI credits for the segment of micro, small and medium enterprises was Rp435.2 trillion or an increase of 14.8 percent year-on-year making up 72.1 percent of the banks outstanding credits.

"The credit growth was thanks to its solid balance sheet, with credit ratio to third party fund at 90.7 percent by the end of September 2016," he said.

He said the bank succeeded in keeping its non performing loan ratio well under control at o.6 percent net and 2.2 percent gross.

Asmawi Syam said that in the first nine months of 2016, third party funds held by BRI grew 8.8 percent to Rp665.5 trillion - a growth higher than the average 5.6 percent growth of the industry by August, 2016.

He said 57.6 percent of the third party funds are in current account saving account (CASA) or cheap funds such as giro and saving that totaled Rp383.4 trillion or an increase of 11.7 percent.

Meanwhile, publicly traded lender PT Bank Maybank Indonesia reported a 118.4 percent rise in net profit to Rp1.3 trillion in the first nine months of the year from Rp592.2 billion in the same period last year.

President Director of the Malaysian bank Taswin Zakaria attributed the strong performance of the bank to healthy growth in net interest income, increase in fee based income, positive performance of its sharia banking unit.

Taswin said the bank net interest income (NII) rose 14.8 percent to Rp5.5 trillion by the end of September 2016 from Rp4.8 trillion a year earlier. The increase in the NII was attributable to banks discipline in setting credit interest and in the management of funds. The bank also recorded an increase in the net interest margin (NIM) from 4.8 percent in September 2015 to 5.1 percent in September 2016.

"The bank has continued to chalk up an increase in operation in the first nine months of the year. The performance of our core business increased significantly thanks to tight risk and cost management and discipline to set pricing and growth. We are optimistic we would close the financial year of 2016 with good result," he said.

The banks fee based income rose 21.4 percent from Rp1.6 trillion in the first nine months of 2015 to Rp1.9 trillion in the same period in 2016.

"The fee based income included fee from bancasurrance business through partnership with Allianz, fee related to treasury, administration of loan and retail and other banking services," he said.

Taswin Zakaria said further the net profit from its sharia banking unit rose 43.9 percent year-on-year to Rp344 billion in the first nine months of 2016.

Sharia financing grew 39.3 percent from Rp8.1 trillion in the first nine months of 2015 to Rp11.3 trillion in the same period in 2016, he added.

Meanwhile total savings in the sharia banking unit surged 80.3 percent from Rp5.6 trillion to Rp10.1 trillion, he said.

The assets of the sharia banking unit of PT Bank Maybank Indonesia increased 33.5 percent to Rp17.8 trillion or 10.9 percent of the total assets of the bank. (*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016