Ahold to quit Indonesia

Ahold to quit Indonesia

SINGAPORE (AFP): Dutch giant Royal Ahold plans to pull out its loss-making supermarket operations from Singapore, China and Indonesia, a report said Saturday.

Royal Ahold, however, will expand its profitable chains in Malaysia and Thailand, the Business Times here quoted an Ahold spokesman in the Netherlands as saying.

"We will divest our non-profitable operations and (we) are in the process of doing that," the spokesman said.

Ahold's Asian supermarkets chalked up sales of about 903 million Netherlands gilders (US$444.58 million) in 1998, accounting for a mere 1.5 percent of global sales.

Its business in Asia last year posted an operating loss of some 103 million gilders, up from a loss of 79 million gilders in 1997.

The company declined to give a breakdown of losses for individual countries last year.

"For China, Singapore and Indonesia, we will still need many years to be profitable," he said, adding that the group believes it would be better off focusing on profitable operations in Thailand and Malaysia.

Ahold currently operates some 140 supermarkets under the name Tops in five Asian countries -- some 40 outlets each in China, Thailand and Malaysia, 14 in Singapore and seven in Indonesia.