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Bank Indonesia said on Friday that it was likely to issue a new regulation establishing a mandatory loan-to-deposit ratio for the country’s banks next month.

The introduction of a loan-to-deposit ratio is among a number of policies the central bank is pursuing to encourage banks to lend more to productive sectors of the economy.

Halim Alamsyah, Bank Indonesia’s director of banking research and regulation, said the regulation was being finalized and should be issued in April.

Acting Bank Indonesia Governor Darmin Nasution said the central bank was still deciding at what level to set the ratio.

]He said banks would be given a range — 70 percent to 80 percent, for example.

“There is one meeting left [before the regulation issued],” Darmin said. “It is about where we set the range.”

It was important that central bank set the range at the right levels, he added.

According to Bank Indonesia, at the end of December the average loan-to-deposit ratio of commercial banks was 72.88 percent, but the ratios at various banks ranged widely, with some as low as 50 percent and others while others had ratios of almost 90 percent.

However, Sigit Pramono, chairman of the Indonesian Banks Association (Perbanas), said he did not think the policy would be successful in encouraging banks to expand lending.

He said Bank Indonesia should instead looking at revamping the credit-rating system so businessmen who had been blacklisted for defaulting on loans as far back as the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis could once again borrow money.

He said many of them were “good businessmen” whose businesses collapsed as a result of the crisis rather than their incompetence or mismanagement.

Lisawati, vice president director of PT Bank Jasa Jakarta, said she had no problem with a mandatory loan-to-deposit ratio as long as undisbursed loans were recorded as loans under the new regulation.

“Undisbursed loans means we are committed to giving the loan. However, our customers might have a reason to delay taking the loan,” she said.

At the end of last year the total a m ount of undisbursed loans at domestic banks was Rp 300 trillion ($33 billion).

Among other Bank Indonesia policies aimed at increasing bank lending: a move to issue longer-term government bonds to make it more difficult for domestic banks to buy lots of short-term bonds so they will lend more of their funds instead.