Jakarta. State-owned bank BNI recently said that it was optimistic about reaching its credit target.

As of September 2023, the bank’s credit distribution had grown 7.8 percent year-on-year (yoy), which mostly came from the corporate and consumer segments. According to Novita Widya Anggraini, the director for finance at BNI, the bank’s credit could grow in line with the company’s target of between 7 and 9 percent by this year’s end.

“We believe this economic growth momentum will continue until the end of the year so we can record the targeted credit distribution growth to record optimum profit,” Novita was quoted as saying in a recent press statement.

Novita also laid out some of the bank’s strategies to achieve the targeted credit distribution. BNI will focus on targeting blue chip and regional champion corporations, optimizing the value chain, and expanding on prospective sectors. It is also eyeing several prospective and resilient economic sectors to boost credit, among others, manufacturing and the downstream or domestic processing of natural resources. It will also make green loans a priority.

“We have a strong pipeline in the wholesale segment until the end of the year. They are the blue chips from prospective economic sectors,” Novita said.

BNI’s credit distribution also grew 3.2 percent on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis in Q3-2023. This was higher than the 2.6 percent QoQ growth in the previous quarter. Novita added that the bank remained prudent when distributing the credits.

“The credit growth mostly came from low-risk segments, namely private and state-owned blue chip corporations, consumer credits, and our subsidiaries Hibank and BNI Finance,” Novita said.