State-owned lender Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BR) announced its net profit rose 22.95 percent to Rp12.54 trillion in the first half of 2021 compared to the year-ago period.

The profit was chiefly driven by credit growth, which surpassed the national average, BRI president director Sunarso said at an online press conference on Friday.

By late June 2021, BRI extended credit worth Rp929.40 trillion compared to Rp922.97 trillion in the corresponding period of last year, he informed.

The bank disbursed micro credit to the tune of Rp366.56 trillion in the first six months of 2021, an increase of 17 percent year-on-year, Sunarso said.

The micro credit growth was the result of BRI’s commitment to focus on extending credit to micro businesses, he added. By late June, micro credit constituted 39.44 percent of the total credit channeled by the bank, he pointed out. “This suggests that (we are) on the right track to achieve the ratio of minimum micro credit to total credit of 45 percent by 2025,” he said.

Currently, the proportion of credit extended to micro, small, and medium businesses to the total credit has increased to 80.62 percent from 78.58 percent earlier, he informed.

He said consumer credit also rose by 3.54 percent to Rp145.94 trillion by the end of the second quarter of 2021.

Meanwhile, the ratio of BRI’s non-performing loans at the end of the second quarter of 2021 stood at 3.30 percent, with NPL coverage reaching 254.84 percent, he added.

Source: Antara News