Bank Bira gets IC and LC ratings

Bank Bira gets IC and LC ratings

JAKARTA (JP): Publicly-listed Bank Bira has won an intra-
country issuer (IC) rating of B/C and a short-term local currency
(LC) rating of LC-2 from Thomson BankWatch of New York.

The bank announced yesterday that the ratings reflected its
success in the last two years.

Parveen Gandhi, the bank's advisor, said that Bank Bira is the
second Indonesian bank to receive the B/C rating. Panin Bank was
granted the same rating in July last year.

"Bank Bira could be the first local bank to receive two
ratings at the same time," he said.

IC ratings provided by Thomson Bankwatch range from IC-A to
IC-E, for a total of nine. The IC-A, IC-A/B and IC-B ratings have
not been assigned to any Indonesian private-sector financial
institutions, he said.

Gandhi said that the IC-B/C is the fourth rating out of nine
provided by Thomson BankWatch, a bank credit rating agency
covering more than 1,000 financial institutions in over 50
countries.

The LC-2 rating, the second highest local currency rating
provided by the rating agency, indicates that the bank's safety
regarding timely repayment of debt principal and interest is
strong, Gandhi said.

Bank Bira last year also obtained a short-term credit rating
of TBW-3 for its offshore borrowings of US$20 million.

According to Thomson BankWatch, Bank Bira is a market leader
in on-shore loan syndication and domestic commercial paper
issues. Fee income from these sources rose by 133.5 percent in
1994 to Rp 14.1 billion (US$6.40 million).

Profits for 1994 increased almost five fold to Rp 18 billion.
Return on average assets more than doubled to 2.2 percent. (hen)