Citibank sets conservative loan growth target

Lender Citibank Indonesia expects to book single-digit loan growth next year although it believes lending will pick up speed in the second half of 2017, the company’s top management said on Wednesday.

“For Citibank, we expect single-digit [lending growth]. It is better to be a bit conservative because we expect that lending will start to pick up in the third quarter,” Citibank’s CEO Batara Sianturi said.

He said Citibank was confident that the economy would improve next year, partly because it expects the funds released from the tax amnesty to flow into Indonesia’s real sector.

More liquid assets entering the country’s economy could be used to fund various projects, which would increase demand for loans, he said.

Batara said the company would focus on pushing loan growth in all segments, which include institutional banking and retail banking.

The lender’s financial report for the January-to-September period recorded that the bank’s loans decreased by 7.3 percent annually to Rp 39.07 trillion (US$2.9 billion) from Rp 42 trillion year-on-year.