State-owned lender Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) expects to see slower business in 2014, citing the general elections as the main reason.

The political year will most likely see businesspeople play things safe and tone down their operations, according to BNI president director Gatot Mudiantoro Suwondo.

'€œWe haven'€™t made any official business plan, but we will set a lower than moderate target for next year, especially in loans,'€ he said during a press conference on Friday.

With the '€œlower than moderate'€ target, the publicly listed bank will see its growth rate surge by around 18 to 20 percent, compared to the previous rates, which exceeded 20 percent.

Gatot added newly implemented Bank Indonesia (BI) policies, including on mortgages, would start having an effect on BNI in 2014. To offset slower business, BNI plans on boosting its '€œlow-cost'€ funds, which consist of savings and time deposits.

Rising savings and time deposits will translate into lower funds costs and a higher net interest margin (NIM) for the bank, said Gatot.

'€œThat way, we will hopefully be able to maintain our NIM at around 6 percent,'€ he said, adding the bank had no plan yet to look for outside funding to finance its operations.

BNI treasury and financial institutions director Adi Setianto said it still had ample funds as it possessed several government bonds that were set to mature within the next five years. BNI data shows the bank is slated to receive around Rp 22.49 trillion (US$2 billion) from the bonds in that time period.

BNI also reported higher net interest and fee-based incomes had seen its net profits increase by 30 percent year-on-year to Rp 6.54 trillion from January to September.

According to its latest financial report, net interest income rose 23.4 percent to Rp 13.82 trillion, supported by higher lending, which grew 27.3 percent to Rp 234.91 trillion. Its fee-based income grew as well, up 24.2 percent to Rp 7.15 trillion.

The overall lending was dominated by corporate loans with 43.6 percent. BNI business banking director Krishna R. Suparto said manufacturing, trading and infrastructure remained the three biggest industries in corporate loans so far. '€œThis is in line with numerous projects under the MP3EI [the Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesia'€™s Economic Development] program,'€ he told reporters.

The third quarter'€™s results show that BNI has now achieved more than 95 percent of its 2013 credit growth target, which is set at Rp 246.91 trillion. The target is 23 percent higher than last year.

Similar to loans, BNI also posted double-digit growth in its third-party funds, which surged 15.4 percent to Rp 275.63 trillion. The majority of the funds were recorded in savings and the rest were made up in time and demanded deposits.

BNI had a total of Rp 362.42 trillion in assets as of September, according to its financial report.

Following the announcement of its third quarter results, the bank'€™s shares '€” sold under the code '€œBBNI'€ at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) '€” ended at Rp 4,550 apiece on Friday, climbed 0.5 percent from a day before.