BRI relies on Simpedes

CIREBON: PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk, which actively targets urban customers, still relies on saving product for rural areas as the source of low-cost fund.Simpedes, the saving product for rural community, is considered as the main source to support business growth besides financing micro, small and medium businesses.Simpedes remains our prime product, adding to other savings such as BRItama and others. The portion is quite large, about 30% third party fund, BRI Director of Business and Micro Small Medium Businesses Djarot Kusumajakti said at a bank event in Cirebon yesterday.Through March this year, Simpedes has generated IDR70.27 trillion, or 21.38% of total IDR328.56 trillion in third party fund. The fund is savings of 20.15 million customers in rural areas.The number of Simpedes products are significantly high, compared to other saving products such as Britama, which has 7.66 million customers. Total BRI customers through March this year is 28.85 million.We are optimistic that Simpedes will keep growing in line with the company target, considering that Simpedes is the prime product for the people, Djarot said.Simpedes is a saving product that is marketed through BRI units in rural areas in district level. The public bank is controlling more than 4,800 branches.Djarot is optimistic that undisbursed loan, the approved but not paid credit, at the end of second quarter this year would reduce by IDR10 trillion from IDR31.73 trillion in March this year.He added that the decline would happen because there are many governmental and private projects, mainly infrastructure, in progress this year. (T04/NOM)