Bank BNI to handle repayment of depositors

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has appointed Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) to repay the depositors of the recently closed down Bank Asiatic and Bank Dagang Bali (BDB), who are covered by the blanket guarantee program, a finance ministry official said.

The decision was made as BNI had fulfilled two requirements, namely, tendering the lowest fee for the service and having enough branch offices to implement the compensation scheme, the Ministry of Finance's director general of financial institutions, Darmin Nasution, told reporters on Thursday.

The government had previously been considering two other state-owned banks, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) and Bank Mandiri, besides BNI, to act as payment banks for the depositors.

"Both BNI and BRI said they would not charge a fee and have enough branch offices. BRI, however, had previously requested a fee of 1 percent and was too late in submitting its final offer," Darmin said.

Darmin asserted that there would be no concessions for BNI, such as the automatic transferring of existing accounts at the two banks to BNI.

"BNI can ask the depositors if they want to transfer their accounts to BNI, but they must not oblige customers to do so," he said.

Darmin, however, said that from past experience, most depositors in closed-down banks usually took the safe and easy option of transferring their accounts, rather than withdrawing their deposits in cash.

Darmin further said that the funds for the payout would be taken from the Rp 40 trillion (US$4.7 billion) worth of contingency funds stashed in the government's Account No. 519, although the exact amount that would be disbursed to BNI would not be determined until all the accounts with the two banks had been verified.

The state comptroller (BPKP) is currently verifying the accounts in an attempt to weed out fraudulent ones or those belonging to depositors affiliated to the banks' owners.

Bank Asiatic currently has 2,200 depositors, while BDB has 408,000. Depositor funds in the two banks amount to some Rp 2.39 trillion.

Bank Indonesia (BI) shut down the two banks last week due to their irredeemable financial circumstances, which were caused by illegal transactions worth Rp 1.2 trillion in loans. Investigations by the authorities are now under way with a view to the bringing of prosecutions against those responsible for the transactions.