Bank Mandiri Reports 15.6 Pct Increase In Profit

Jakarta, July 25 (Antara) - The country`s largest lender in assets Bank Mandiri Tbk reported a 15.6 percent increase year-on-year in net profit to Rp9.6 trillion in the first half of 2014. In the same period in 2013, the publicly traded state bank recorded Rp8.3 trillion in net profit, its president director Budi G. Sadikin said here on Thursday. Budi attributed the strong performance mainly to increase in net interest income and in fee based income. Until the end of the first half of the year, the bank recorded Rp19.4 trillion in net interest margin (NIM) or a 17.6 percent increase from Rp16.4 trillion a year before. "The LDR (loan to deposit ratio), therefore, reached 86.97 percent," Budi said. The ratio was still below the maximum limit of 91 percent set by Bank Indonesia. Its fee based income rose 11.5 percent to Rp7.3 trillion from Rp6.5 trillion in the same period in 2013, Budi said. He said quarter I and quarter II were difficult period for the country`s banking industry because of a slowdown in a number of sectors. Amid the difficulties we were focused not on making profit as much as possible but we have to be concerned more on maintaining liquidity," he said. By the end of the first half of the year, the bank recorded Rp485.8 trillion in outstanding credits or an increase of 13.3 percent from Rp428.7 trillion a year earlier. The credits were dominated by productive sector accounting for Rp370.1 trillion and with credits for small and medium scale enterprises making up Rp65.8 trillion of the total amount of the outstanding credits. The increase in credits for the productive sectors was contributed by credits of Rp91.9 trillion for the manufacturing sector, and Rp83.6 trillion for the trade, restaurant and hotel sector. Budi , however, acknowledged the credits grew faster than the third party funds held by the bank. Its third party funds totaled Rp555.9 trillion by the end of the first half of the year or an increase of only 10.7 percent from Rp502.4 trillion a year earlier. Savings contributed more to the third party funds accounting for Rp226.1 trillion, Budi said . Thanks to the increase in its net profit , the assets of the bank rose 13.8 percent year-on-year to Rp764.9 trillion, he said.