BNI to provide low-cost housing credits soon

BNI to provide low-cost housing credits soon

JAKARTA (JP): Bank Negara Indonesia, the country's top
commercial bank, will provide low-cost housing credits beginning
next year as part of its program to increase retail borrowers.

BNI's president Widigdo Sukarman announced yesterday the
bank's program to provide the cheap housing credits would also
aim at providing more financial access for low-income people to
own houses.

"But we cannot disclose yet the scheme of the program,
including the amount of credits provided and the lending rates
for the housing credits," he told members of the press after
speaking at a workshop held by the Association of Real Estate
Developers (REI) yesterday.

"I do not have the figures for that in my hand now right now,"
he said.

He said that the bank was now assessing the program and that
it expected to have subsidized crediting from Bank Indonesia, the
central bank, to finance the low-cost housing credit project.

Widigdo said that BNI would not compete with state-owned Bank
Tabungan Negara (BTN) with the new credit scheme but instead it
would help it provide credit to low-income people.

The publicly-listed BNI, which is controlled by the
government, currently extends most of its credits to corporations
while BTN focuses its operations on home loans.

Analysts viewed that BNI's move to provide low-cost housing
credits was a warm-up before a merger of the two banks.

BTN may merge with BNI as part of the country's financial
reforms in the country's ailing banking industry, according to
the analysts.

BTN's president Tito Sutalaksana, however, declined to comment
on merger speculations saying that he knew nothing that would
warrant such rumors.

"We do not know of any such plan," he said.

"But if BNI provides low-cost housing credits, it will be good
for us," he said.

BTN's Tito Sutalaksana said yesterday that the bank had
financed the construction of at least 1.43 million low-cost
housing units since 1974.

He said that during the January to October period of this year
alone, BTN had financed 147,884 units of low-cost houses worth Rp
1.21 trillion.

The bank previously projected that it would finance 144,678
low-cost housing units valued at Rp 1.24 trillion in 1997, he
said. (aly)