Excessive interest rate

Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) increased interest on its loans from 19 percent to 30 percent under the housing loan (KPR) scheme. It has now further increased the rate to 50 percent.

This has aggravated its customers' problems in the current economic crisis. It shows BII's arrogance and tyranny in fixing an arbitrary rate. The bank seems to equate itself to the VOC (the Dutch trading company that held a monopoly in Indonesia from 1602 to 1799) which unrelentingly drained the country's resources. BII forgets that when it was in a dither with liquidity problems, due to mismanagement, it was saved by liquidity credits from Bank Indonesia to the tune of Rp 750 billion, which belonged to the people (see Forum magazine's special edition in December, 1997). Moody's, an international rating agency, reported on Jan. 27, 1998 the downgrading of BII from D to E.

We, the undersigned, BII customers under the KPR scheme, appeal to fellow customers everywhere to unite and jointly confront BII's arrogance by, among other things, postponing payment of installments until the bank is willing to listen to its customers and fix a reasonable rate of interest and hold negotiations in a professional way.

A request is also directed to the state minister of public housing and settlement, the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, banking and legal experts, to contribute their thoughts in order to spare us the despotism of BII which intends to entirely drain our reserves.

We do want to pay our installments, but the bank should not raise its interest rates at will in such a way as to erode our financial capacity, which continues to decline in the current situation that nobody could predict.

A special question to legal experts: Can a loan agreement, the contents of which oppress one side (the debtor) and benefit the other side (BII), be revised into a just and civilized one?

DINDIN M.M. and friends

Jakarta