Govt may reveal names of large debtor companies

JAKARTA (JP): The government may in future disclose the names of corporates with large foreign debts to provide more transparency, Finance Minister Fuad Bawazier has said.

Fuad said Wednesday night the move would be in line with the new presidential decree requiring all companies with foreign debts to report them to Bank Indonesia, the central bank.

"The decree which requires companies to report their debts to Bank Indonesia has been signed by the President," Fuad was quoted by Antara as saying.

"With this regulation, it will be clear who has borrowed from overseas," he added.

He was speaking Wednesday at a week-long dialog held by the Association of Islamic Students to discuss the urgent need for economic and political reform.

Bank Indonesia estimated early this month the country's private foreign debt at US$67.7 billion, not including $12.5 billion owed by state companies.

A government-appointed team, headed by former finance minister Radius Prawiro, is negotiating with the country's private sector indebted firms to settle the issue of how to repay the mountain of money.

The team met with creditor banks last week in New York, where they agreed on a broad set of principles to provide a framework for bilateral negotiations modeled by Mexico's Ficorca program on private external debt.

The bankers said, however, they wanted proof that Indonesia was complying with the terms of its recent agreement with the International Monetary Fund before they could sign any such plan.

They also want a more thorough examination of the country's economic health and a breakdown of the corporations' debt loads.

Another round of negotiations will be held from May 8 to May 10 in Tokyo.

The director general of air transportation at the Ministry of Communications, Zainudin Sikado, said separately Wednesday that a lack of transparency had made it hard for the government to help local airlines settle their offshore debts.

"I don't know why they (airline operators) cannot be transparent about their offshore debts," Sikado said after a media briefing with Minister of Communications Giri Suseno Hadihardjono.

Zainudin said the directorate general had been willing to act as a mediator between the airlines and the lessors of their airplanes.

But the airlines had not been truthful in revealing the cost of the aircraft rental fees, he said.

Sikado indicated that they might be hiding something about the rental tariffs.

The rupiah's sharp depreciation against the U.S. dollar has left the country's five air carriers unable to pay the rental fees of their aircraft, 80 percent of which are in dollars.

At the same time, decreasing loads have forced the airlines to cut some of their flights, and return the aircraft to the lessors.

The former president of national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, Wage Mulyono, said recently that many of the country's airlines rented their aircraft at a high market price.

Indonesian National Air Carriers Association Secretary-General Benny Rungkat recently said the association would meet with the foreign debt negotiating team to discuss a solution to the airlines' debt problem. (das)