DGS pays bond interest

JAKARTA (Bloomberg): Holders of bonds issued by PT Daya Guna Samudera, Indonesia's biggest fishing company, received an on- time interest payment they hadn't expected.

After being told by Daya Guna's parent, Djajanti Group, that they wouldn't receive full interest payments on $225 million of bonds issued in 1997, investors found they had received all of the interest owed them on Dec. 1.

"We were surprised last night when we checked our account... we'd been fully paid," said Soufat Hartawan, assistant investment manager at Manulife Financial Corp., which holds about $1 million of the company's bonds.

"On Tuesday, Daya Guna said in a statement to the Surabaya Stock Exchange that, because of cash flow problems, it must pay the interest in two tranches: one was to be paid Friday for as much as $5 million and the remaining due will be paid on Jan. 5, 2001."

Try Yantono, Daya Guna's director, said he wasn't sure why the full payment was made. "We instructed the trustee to pay in two tranches," he said.