Denpasar (Bali Post)

Bank Indonesia gave a good response to the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between APEX Perbarindo and Bank Andara. The MoU wasn’t only new in Bali, but also in Indonesia. The cooperation was expected to strengthen BPR joints in capital financing, management, and technology. Thus Head Deputy of Bank of Indonesia Denpasar Branch Wijoyo Santoso and CEO of Bank Andara Paulus Wiranata and Head Commissioner of Bank Andara Stephen Mitchell after the signing of MoU at the corporate law seminar related to credit collateral in banking practice at Hotel Nikki, last Friday (21/8).

According to Paulus Wiranata, the MoU will strengthen the service commitment of Bank Andara. As a wholesale bank, Bank Andara that has a stronger liquidity will support BPR liquidity reinforcement in Bali. “We will try to have a service breakthrough not only in capital financing, management, as well as information technology”, he said.

Bank Andara party will continuously strengthen the BPR management including strengthen up IT (Information Technology). He was sure by strengthening IT, it will affect directly to the service improvement for the clients. Cooperation between Bank Andara and BPR in Bali was targeted to reach the whole BPR in Bali that counted 143 units. “At the first step we cooperate with 70 BPR. We prepared the funding around Rp. 100 billion,” he said.

Head Deputy of Bank of Indonesia Denpasar Branch Wijoyo Santoso advised the need of comprehension on law risks under the MoU. Therefore the issue will need to be responded with more careful primarily on the BPR readiness.

It was admitted that loans from common bank keep decreasing. From Rp. 3.9 trillion by the end of December 2008 decreased to Rp. 3.7 trillion in January 2009.

On the other side BPR had to well manage the cooperation, primarily in human resource and technology preparation. Because, not all BPR has an adequate human resource and ATM. Everything had been done manually. This was something that cause credit interest rate in BPR was still at 24 percent. While the common bank at 14-15 percent. “This shows how small the banking response to the BI effort in decreasing credit interest rate by 300 base points. While the credit interest rate in banking only decreased 50-100 base points,” he said.

The support on MoU of APEX Perbarindo Bali and Bank Andara was also announced by Credit Director of BPR and MSME Central Chairil Anwar. Accordingly, APEX MoU was not only urging from the liquidity side but also in developing BPR capacity and infrastructure in the future.