Govt may reveal names of large debtor companies

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)