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tate-owned Bank Mandiri is striving to become one of the major banks in Southeast Asia, in line with its efforts to offer great services to both its domestic and overseas customers, an executive of the bank says.

To achieve the target, Bank Mandiri, one of the largest banks in Indonesia, will continue to make innovations in business development to maintain consistency in achieving positive performance, Abdul Rachman, the director of institutional banking of Bank Mandiri, said at Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong on Thursday evening.

Abdul made the comments on the sidelines of the presentation of an award declaring Bank Mandiri as the best bank in Indonesia by the economy and finance magazine Euromoney. The award was presented to Abdul by Euromoney’s global editor Clive Horwood and the magazine’s Asia editor Anuj Gangahar at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence Asia awards ceremony.

Euromoney makes evaluations on financial economic and finance institutions in various countries every year. Criteria used in the evaluation process includes a bank’s financial capabilities, including in assets and profits as well as the capability to continue registering growth. The evaluation is also based on the bank’s capability to adapt to changes in the markets and the customers’ needs, on its successes in launching new banking products and the implementation of its risk management.

Bank Mandiri was one of 90 banks from across the globe presented with an award on Thursday evening by Euromoney. It was the fourth award presented to Bank Mandiri by Euromoney after previous awards presented in 2004, 2008 and 2009.

“We’re grateful for this achievement, and what we have done is the result of the hard work by all the bank’s employees,” Abdul said. “We’ll continue making preparations ahead of the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015. In case we feel it will be feasible to open a new branch overseas, we will do it,” he said.

Abdul explained that through the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community, there will be facilities for both Indonesian businesspeople to do business in the ASEAN region and also businesspeople from ASEAN to do business in Indonesia.

Bank Mandiri, which recorded total assets of up to Rp 547 trillion (US$57.98 billion) in the first quarter of 2012, has now operated in a number of countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Cayman Islands, Timor Leste and Britain.

Bank Mandiri’s total assets increased by 17.3 percent from the corresponding period last year. The increase was made possible by credit growth, which reached 29.9 percent annually from Rp 252 trillion in the first quarters of 2011 to Rp 327 trillion.