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)