Response on new credit program in Indonesia: An asymmetric information perspective

The Indonesian government launched a new people's business credit program as part of a package of economic policy and deregulation. The interest rate is set lower than the average of the current loan interest rates, especially when compared with rural bank interest rates. To capture the social spatial aspects, quota sampling is applied to ten areas that divided based on the social culture. Further, the method utilized in this research is logit models, which designed to analyse the determinants of asymmetric information particularly on the rural bank and small micro enterprises. The study was conducted in East Java as the province with the largest number of rural banks in Indonesia. Based on the estimation of asymmetric information model to the respondent of rural banks and small businesses, the result shows that adverse selection can be avoided by strengthening the information about prospective borrowers. Regarding moral hazard, rural banks and small businessmen argued that the imposition of the collateral to the debtor has an important role to avoid moral hazard. Rural bank respondents stated that the KUR program with low-interest rates has affected their business development. The results implied the need of broadening the collaboration schemes between this people's business credit program and rural banks.