JAKARTA, 7 March 2022 -- PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero), Tbk. or BNI continues to strive for expansion of overseas business performance in line with the stronger global economic recovery. As a state-owned Bank with a mandate to become a global Bank, BNI continues to increase customer expansion as well as optimize the performance of global Banking services earlier this year.
PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero), Tbk. or BNI continues to strive for expansion of overseas business performance in line with the stronger global economic recovery. As a state-owned Bank with a mandate to become a global Bank, BNI continues to increase customer expansion as well as optimize the performance of global Banking services earlier this yea.
This also encourages an increase in fee-based income or trade fee-based income (FBI), which in 2021 will grow by 7.46% on an annual basis or year-on-year (yoy).
BNI's Treasury and International Director, Henry Panjaitan, said that the performance of foreign trade at the beginning of this year was still growing positively, thus boosting BNI's global Banking performance. Demand for commodities and products from Indonesia is increasing in line with the global economic recovery. Imports from abroad also grew positively in line with the increase in domestic production and consumption. “We hope that the positive performance from last year will continue this year. Moreover, the trend of foreign trade at the beginning of this year is still very positive," he said.
Henry said that this year's customer expansion efforts were also carried out by cooperating with many digital platforms that brought together SME creative industry players in Indonesia and buyers from abroad. In this collaboration, BNI hopes that more MSME players will have the opportunity to export their products overseas. “Obviously, we already have a lot of strategic cooperation plans that we will run throughout this year. Not only to improve transaction performance, but we are also looking for opportunities for financing, including the Indonesian diaspora abroad," he said.
Minimal Impact of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict
Henry said that BNI saw that the economic impact of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict was relatively minimal on the Indonesian economy. Last year, Indonesia's exports to Russia were recorded at US$1.49 billion or only 0.65% of Indonesia's total exports. Meanwhile, Indonesia's exports to Ukraine were recorded at US$416.9 million or only 0.18% of Indonesia's total exports.
However, BNI continues to pay attention to the impact of this conflict on the increase in world oil prices, which ultimately has an impact on rising inflation in Indonesia. This certainly has the potential to accelerate the increase in Bank Indonesia's benchmark interest rate.
Nevertheless, we hope that the increase in commodity prices will encourage stronger economic growth in the country. We also hope that the conflict will end soon, in order to provide certainty in doing business, and make the investment climate better, so that it has a positive impact on the economy. "This will certainly have a good impact on many economic sectors in Indonesia, which are currently doing quite well through the economic recovery period," he explained.