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Major banks perform well in 2021, COVID-19 policy key to 2022 growth
Three leading banks closed last year with solid performances as the economy recovered from the 2020 recession on supportive government policies.
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Workers print credit cards on Aug. 10, 2012 at BNI's card division in Jakarta. The bank showed solid performance in 2021 amid improving market conditions. (JP/Nurhayati)
D
espite the impact of the Delta variant last year, major Indonesian banks closed 2021 with solid performance, thanks to economic recovery from the 2020 recession and supportive government policies.
Annual net profit at state-owned Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) doubled last year, while state-owned Bank Mandiri, the largest bank by assets, booked an increase of more than 60 percent. Both banks have completely reversed their dismal figures from 2020, when their profits dropped by 78 and 38 percent, respectively.
Bank Central Asia (BCA), the country’s biggest private lender, reported a 15 percent rise in annual net profit in 2021 following a 5 percent dip a year earlier. Its net profit was the largest among the three.
Executives from the three banks said on different occasions that these figures were beyond their expectations as well as market expectations, yet BNI president director Royke Tumilaar said in a statement on Wednesday that there was “still room for further improvement”.
Center for Reform on Economics (CORE) research director Piter Abdullah said on Friday that at least two policies had contributed to the banks’ significant improvement.
The loan restructuring program allowed banks to reclassify some nonperforming loans (NPLs) as good loans, meaning those loans did not require immediate provisioning that could have eroded the banks’ earnings.
