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INDONESIAN Government is considering to write off debts or bleach the debts of Balinese businessmen, especially in the tourism, hotels and restaurants sector.
According to Deputy Minister of BUMN II Kartika Wirjoarmodjo, said this option arose because state-owned banks that are members of the Association of State-Owned Banks (Himbara) reported that many entrepreneurs in Bali had difficulty repaying credit debts, even though credit restructuring was granted.
“There is already an old debt that is impossible to pay off at any time because of the problems in the past two years,” he said at the National Economic Recovery Acceleration Workshop, recently.
At the same time, entrepreneurs in tourism, hotels and restaurants in Bali also need additional working capital credit. This is because they plan to open operations again in June 2021. The problem is, given that they still have debts in banks, banks cannot provide new working capital loans to entrepreneurs. Because this can increase the ratio of non-performing loans or non-performing loans (NPLs) to banks.
“This is what we are thinking about, whether this old debt can be written off before we move forward. From here, of course there will be natural selection and maybe the reserves in April-May will be large to reflect what is impossible to pay off,” Kartika Wirjoarmodjo explained.
This option arose because the write-off of credit debt or bleaching is actually common practice by banks. For Bali, this is a special situation, there was also the Mount Agung disaster, we did forgiveness for MSMEs.
“Even so, this policy option is not final. Banks will first examine the payment ability of their customers who are entrepreneurs in the tourism, hotel and restaurant sectors. This is what we will map, which ones only need working capital, old debts can be restructured again because they are still capable and which ones are not possible to pay their old debts because they have to go bankrupt first or be bleached first,” he finished. [kontan.co.id/photo special
