T

he state-owned Indonesian Export Financing Agency (LPEI) has reported that its total financing throughout 2012 jumped 31.7 percent to Rp 27.05 trillion (US$2.78 billion) from the previous year, with a huge portion of the figure channeled to the industry sector.

According to LPEI, also known as Indonesia Eximbank, the industry sector dominated its export financing with 50.8 percent. The rest of the portfolio consisted of agriculture with 11.8 percent, services with 11.1 percent, transportation with 9.4 percent, trading with 6.7 percent and others with 10.2 percent.

LPEI president director I Made Gde Erata said on Monday that despite the recent slowdown in the country’s exports, the agency had managed to increase its export financing thanks to its growing portfolio in infrastructure and small and medium enterprise (SME) loans.

In infrastructure, LPEI disbursed loans to several projects supporting export activities, such as sea ports, roads and warehouses, Made said, adding that these projects offered huge potential.

Some of the projects included the Kawasan Berikat Marunda port in North Jakarta and the two terminals of PT Siam Maspion Terminal in Gresik, East Java.

As of December 2012, the total outstanding infrastructure loans had reached Rp 2 trillion. LPEI, the sole export financing agency in the country, expects to see at least double-digit growth in infrastructure loans by the end of the year.

The agency’s financing for SMEs also brought positives last year. The total outstanding SME loans stood at Rp 2.39 trillion, up 37.4 percent from 2011. LPEI finance director Basuki Setyadjid said that LPEI had a total of 1,250 SME clients as of December 2012. Most of them were indirect customers who obtained the loans from third parties, such as banks.

“Our capacity for direct disbursement is still limited because we only have three branches in Makassar [South Sulawesi], Medan [North Sumatra] and Surabaya [East Java],” he said. LPEI is aiming to record
Rp 3.6 trillion in outstanding SME loans by the end of this year, increasing by half from 2012.

According to Basuki, new export destinations have slowly begun to play a role in the export value of LPEI’s creditors. Last year, the creditors ventured to 14 “non-
traditional” markets, such as Algeria, Ghana, Lebanon, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates.

Exports to the new destinations accounted for 2.4 percent of the total export value in 2012 and the agency planned to increase penetration into those markets this year.

LPEI’s 2012 net profits rose 27.1 percent to Rp 585.62 billion. Its non-performing loan (NPL) ratio, which is the ratio of its bad loans, fell to 2.1 percent from the previous level of 3.2 percent in 2011. Made said the agency managed to reduce the ratio because some of its creditors were able to pay off their debts.