BRI Posts Net Profit of Rp5.01 Tln in Q1

Jakarta (Antara) - Publicly-listed state lender PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) said it posted a net profit of Rp5.01 trillion in the first quarter of 2013, up by 18.76 percent from the same period last year. The profit was fueled by credit growth which reached 27.6 percent year-on-year, the bank's director of micro small and medium businesses, Djarot Kusumayakti, said on Wednesday. The amount of micro credits extended in the first quarter of 2013 grew 22.3 percent compared to 16.12 percent in the same period last year, he said. The micro segment contributed 31.07 percent of the total credits, making it the biggest contributor in the bank's credit portfolio, he said. "The contributions of micro credits to the bank's credit portfolio continued to increase in the past five years. The growth of micro credits has raised not only the amount of outstanding loans but also the number of customers," he said. Meanwhile, the bank's ratio of operating expenses to operating revenues showed a downward trend, falling to 60.46 percent in the first quarter of 2013 from 61.31 percent in the same period last year, he said. He said BRI will make constant efforts to apply principles of prudence by improving its capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and capital structure. "BRI's CAR reached 17.91 percent at the end of March 2013, with 94 percent of its capital structure constituting TIER I capital," he said. (*)