Role of Bank Indonesia in SMEs Development

As a consequence of Act No. 23/1999 on Bank Indonesia dated 17 May 1999, the subsidized direct program credits managed by Bank Indonesia have been shifted to three state owned companies; BRI (state owned bank), PT. Permodalan Nasional Madani PNM (state owned financial holding company) and PT. Bank Tabungan Negara (state owned Housing Bank). The Act prohibits Bank Indonesia to extend credit facilities including to the rural and agricultural sector. The amount of liquidity credit shifted from Bank Indonesia to these state owned companies was Rp 21.8 trillion. These state owned companies then have the duty to relend the liquidity credits until the credits are due of which will be repaid to Bank Indonesia. The future financing for these programs will have to be provided by the government out of its budget.
Bank Indonesia is still managing two-step loans and providing some related technical assistance, but in the long term these functions too should be transferred to other institutions. Bank Indonesia has commissioned a study of alternative institutions which might undertake this sort of technical assistance to financial institutions. The details of this technical assistance is given latter in this paper. The details on how future two step, i.e. foreign donor financed loans will be handled is being worked out by the Government. The issues are difficult because of the governmental guarantee that foreign lenders typically require.
In its role as banking regulator, Bank Indonesia is preparing a policy to encourage banks to lend to small scale enterprises and micro-enterprises. This policy will help banks to diversify their portfolio and deliver credit based on market orientation and interest rates. It will also devote itself to developing and providing an enabling regulatory environment for rural banking and the Islamic banking system. Moreover, Bank Indonesia will encourage the setting up of a specialized bank for Agricultural financing and improvement in the performance of credit guarantee institutions.
The technical assistance activities of Bank Indonesia presently include Proyek Kredit Mikro (PKM) jointly financed with the Asian Development Bank through which micro borrowers access money primarily through groups from BPR, Proyek Hubungan Bank dan Kelompok Swadaya Masyarakat (PHBK) through which self help groups and NGOs are linked to banks, Sistem Informasi Agroindustri Berbasis Ekspor (SIABE) dan Sistem Informasi Baseline Economic Survey (SIB) which serve as resources for those borrowing and lending especially for agroindustry, the dissemination of a series of sector specific lending models to help banks lend to small industry, and a number of other initiatives.