Govt foreign debt drops to $61.3 billion
Govt foreign debt drops to $61.3 billion
JAKARTA (JP): The government's foreign debt amounted to US$
61.3 billion as of September, Minister of Finance Mar'ie Muhammad
in a hearing with the budgetary commission of the House of
Representatives here yesterday.
Set against the $64 billion -- the total amount of official
foreign debts as of May, which the central bank announced in June
-- Mar'ie figure represented a significant decline.
Mar'ie said 72.2 percent of the $61.3 billion total debt
consisted of overseas soft loans, 25.5 percent of export credits
and the remaining 2.3 percent of commercial loans.
He said foreign loan commitments of $21.2 billion, including
$2 billion in standby commercial loans, had not yet been
disbursed as of September.
Most of the foreign loans, which were obtained mainly from
Japan, the United States, Germany, France and multilateral
institutions, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development
Bank, are soft in nature with maturities of 15 years to 30 years,
grace periods of five years to 10 years and interest rates of
between 2.5 percent and 5.5 percent.
Mar'ie gave the explanations on the first day of his four-day
hearing with the budgetary commission on the implementation of
the first semester of the 1995-1996 state budget.
He told the commission that new official foreign borrowings in
the next fiscal year (1996-1997) would not likely increase from
the current fiscal year.
"We will instead try to early amortize the part of our foreign
debt, which bears high interest rates, or more than 10 percent a
year," Mar'ie added.
The minister that in anticipation of the appreciation of
foreign currencies, especially the yen, the government will
minimize borrowings in yen and will seek more loans in U.S
dollars, or other foreign currencies.
The minister said that during the first half of 1995-1996
(April-September), net capital inflows amounted to $5.6 billion.
"The big capital inflows more than offset the current account
deficit, so that the overall balance of payments ended up the
first semester with a surplus of $913 million."
He added that only $100 million of the total net capital
inflows consisted of official capital and the remainder consisted
of foreign direct or portfolio investments.
Small
"Gross official capital inflows amounted only to $2.5 billion,
while government debt installments reached $2.4 billion," he said
in explaining why the net official capital inflow was so small.
Mar'ie estimated that net capital inflows in the second
semester would reach $4.9 billion, of which $4.5 billion would be
private capital and the rest official loans.
Most of the foreign direct capital will be invested in the
electricity, chemical, textile, paper and food industries, he
added.
Speaking about budget estimates, Mar'ie said internal revenues
for this fiscal year could be Rp 2.9 trillion ($1.26 billion)
larger than the Rp 66.2 trillion envisaged in the budget due
mainly to larger than estimated tax receipts from the oil and
non-oil sectors.
He said tax revenues from oil and natural gas during the first
semester were estimated at Rp 7.42 trillion on the basis of an
average oil price of $17.17 per barrel.
He added that though oil tax receipts might be smaller in the
second semester due to expected lower oil prices, the receipt
target for the whole year would still be achieved due to the
larger revenues in the first semester. (13)