Danamon, Permata sale completed
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
PT Perusahaan Pengelola Aset (PPA), an asset management firm under the Ministry of Finance in charge of the divestment of state assets, said it had officially completed, and therefore closed, the sales of a 10 percent stake in Bank Danamon and a 51 percent stake in Bank Permata.
The company said in a statement that the sale of 490 million shares in Danamon was completed on Nov. 10, while Permata's sale -- in which a consortium led by a UK-based Standard Chartered Bank and Astra International had been declared the winner -- was concluded, including the payment, on Nov. 11.
Proceeds from the two sales total Rp 4.51 trillion (about US$495 million), all to be used by the government to help cover the 2004 state budget deficit estimated at Rp 26.3 trillion, or 1.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).
The amount was still well below the Rp 12.5 trillion the government had budgeted to collect this year.
To make up for that shortfall, the government has said it was planning to sell minority stakes in four more banks later this year through PPA, most likely its shares in Bank Central Asia (BCA), Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII), Bank Niaga and Bank Permata.
PPA still controls a 5 percent stake in BCA, 20.8 percent in Niaga, 21.5 percent in Niaga and 20 percent in Permata.
The banks were all recapitalized by the government as a bail- out program to help rescue the banking sector crippled by the 1997-1998 financial crisis.
With the soaring oil price boosting the government's spending for the fuel subsidy -- coupled with slow progress in a number of revenue targets, including tax collection -- the government is left under pressure to maintain the budget deficit target.
As of Oct. 31, the deficit has reached Rp 27.4 trillion, which accounted for 1.4 percent of GDP, according to the ministry of finance data.
As of Oct. 31, the tax office -- which makes up the lion's share of the budget's source of funding -- has collected some 75 percent of the full-year tax revenue target.
It had raked in Rp 178 trillion in the January-October period, from the total target of Rp 238.5 trillion.