2-day meeting to discuss RI private debt

2-day meeting to discuss RI private debt

TOKYO (Reuters): A steering committee representing Indonesia's creditor banks and representatives from Indonesia will meet in the city today and tomorrow, a banking source here said yesterday.

The meetings, which will discuss Indonesia's private sector debt, will start around 9 a.m. (00:00 GMT) and are expected to last until early in the evening, the source said.

The 13-member bank committee -- co-chaired by Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi (BTM), Chase Manhattan Corp and Deutsche Bank AG -- may decide to hold another meeting on May 10, the source said.

In the previous meeting held in mid-April in New York, representatives of the Indonesian government and the committee agreed on a set of principles governing a possible solution to Indonesia's debt crisis.

The statement released after the New York meeting said the principles agreed upon were "inspired" by the Ficorca program that allowed Mexico to resolve its corporate debt crisis of the early 1980s.

At the meeting in Tokyo, the steering committee will continue to study the Ficorca program and also discuss the activities of working groups, the source said.

The steering committee set up four working groups in April to study solutions to Indonesia's economic crisis.

Topics to be discussed at the Tokyo meeting are likely to include trade finance and interbank credit lines, the source said.

Asked whether the Tokyo meeting was expected to produce agreements, the source said: "Agreements might be reached on some issues, but on other issues, the committee might decide to continue discussions at later dates."