REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Turning 128 years old on December 16 2023, PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk (BRI) continued to show a strong role in driving the country's economy through its commitment to empowering micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
BRI continues to strived to provide access to financing and various mentoring and empowerment programs for MSMEs. BRI President Director Sunarso revealed that specifically BRI's MSME credit distribution was also recorded as growing 11.01 percent from IDR 935.86 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2022 to IDR 1,038.90 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2023.
"Thus, BRI's MSME credit portion reached 83.06 percent compared to BRI's total credit," he said.
Not only financing, BRI is also active in providing various empowerment programs for MSME players. Most recently, BRI successfully held the UMKM EXPO(RT) BRILIANPRENEUR 2023 event on 7-10 December 2023 at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) and managed to record a business matching sales value of 81.3 million US dollars or around IDR 1.26 trillion (with assuming an exchange rate of IDR 15,500 per US dollar).
The UMKM EXPO(RT) BRILIANPRENEUR event itself was organized by BRI as a means of business matching between Indonesian MSMEs and foreign consumers. So that it is hoped that it will be able to develop MSME players to go global and increase national exports. UMKM EXPO(RT) BRILIANPRENEUR 2023 carries the theme "Crafting Global Connection" or assembling global connections.
In the UMKM EXPO(RT) BRILIANPRENEUR 2023, BRI invited 700 MSMEs to be curated. Sunarso explained that the empowerment carried out by BRI does not only target MSME players to go global. BRI's strategy for sustainable growth is twofold. "The first strategy is to upgrade existing customers with various empowerment and assistance programs," he said.
To upgrade existing customers, BRI implemented various empowerment programs, including the BRILian Village program, where by the end of September 2023 BRI has 2,843 assisted villages throughout Indonesia. These villages received various training from BRI to improve the capabilities of village officials, BUMDes administrators and MSME actors in the village.
BRILian Village is only one of many MSME empowerment programs carried out by BRI, others include the MSME Cluster Program, MSME Link and Indonesian People's Market (PARI). Meanwhile, on the other hand, BRI also continues to encourage financial inclusion for MSME business actors, especially micro and ultra-micro businesses.
Next is the My Life Cluster program, which currently BRI has empowered 18,685 business clusters throughout Indonesia. These clusters have received at least 1,411 training and literacy programs as well as 391 production infrastructure assistance. In addition, BRI also has 54 Rumah BUMN, which houses more than 400 thousand MSMEs and has carried out more than 11 thousand trainings.
The second strategy is to look for new sources of growth, or target the ultra-micro segment through ultra-micro holding. BRI is targeting growth in the smaller segment, namely the ultra micro segment. In a relatively short period of time, namely two years, the presence of Ultra Micro (UMi) holding has recorded extraordinary performance.
The holding, which consists of three entities, namely BRI as the holding company, Pegadaian and PNM, has succeeded in spurring financial inclusion and literacy, especially for business actors in the smallest segment, namely ultra-micro. The positive performance of UMi holding until the end of September 2023 is demonstrated by its achievement of successfully integrating more than 36 million debtors, or growing around 10.4 percent on an annual basis (year on year/yoy). In that period, the total outstanding financing of the UMi ecosystem reached IDR 577.9 trillion, growing 11.4 percent yoy.
This performance is supported by 1,013 co-location units or offices that are shared by the three entities. "For 128 years BRI has consistently been a driving force for the people's economy in Indonesia through its support for MSMEs. In the future we are committed to continuing to strengthen this commitment in order to achieve the vision of The Most Valuable Banking Group in South East Asia and Champion of Financial Inclusion," Sunarso said.
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