Creditors to decide Comexindo fate soon
Creditors to decide Comexindo fate soon
JAKARTA (JP): Foreign and local creditors of PT Tirtamas
Comexindo will meet soon to decide the fate of the heavily
indebted general trading company.
Jamaslin Purba from Hotman Paris & Partners law firm, which
represents Tirtamas Comexindo, said here on Thursday the
creditors would vote on March 13 whether to approve the company's
debt restructuring proposal.
If the majority of creditors reject the proposal to
restructure the company's US$400 million debt, the company will
be declared bankrupt and will face liquidation.
"We distributed the preliminary debt restructuring proposal to
all the creditors early this week and hope they view it
positively," said Jamaslin.
The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency -- representing the
now defunct Bank Tamara -- filed a bankruptcy suit against
Tirtamas Comexindo in December last year for its failure to repay
Rp 38 billion ($5.2 million) in matured loans to the closed bank.
The courts then granted Tirtamas Comexindo a suspension of
payment -- known as a PKPU -- giving the company time to
negotiate a debt restructuring agreement with its creditors.
Tirtamas Comexindo is committed to repaying its debts and will
use all the proceeds from its collected receivables to repay
them, Jamaslin said.
In the 12-page preliminary debt restructuring proposal, the
company said its financial difficulties resulted from the
country's economic crisis rather than mismanagement.
The company attributed its deteriorating balance sheet mainly
to fluctuations in the rupiah-dollar exchange rate and high
interest rates.
"Besides having to pay between 40 percent and 70 percent of
interest payments per annum, the company had to convert a
considerable amount of U.S. dollar debt into rupiah at exchange
rates then ranging from 10,500 to 17,000," the proposal said.
According to the Tirtamas Comexindo balance sheet used as the
basis for the debt restructuring proposal, the company had a
total debt of $400 million as of December 1999.
The company's total assets stood at $234 million, of which
$121 million was in the form of account receivables.
Of this $121 million, the largest part was owed by Singapore-
based Indocemex Fibres Pte. Ltd. (ICF), whose debts to Tirtamas
Comexindo stood at $54.7 million.
ICF was declared bankrupt by the courts in Singapore in late
1999.
"Tirtamas Comexindo has tried to collect from ICF, but it did
not receive satisfactory results. It then got even worse when ICF
was declared bankrupt in late 1999," according to the document.
Tirtamas Comexindo is part of the Tirtamas Group owned by
businessman Hashim S. Djojohadikusumo.(udi)