Govt mulls turning Dipasena into SOE
Rendi A. Witular, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The government has been considering turning privately-owned PT Dipasena Citra Darmaja, Southeast Asia's largest shrimp farming company, into a state-owned firm after failing to sell it to prospective investors due to a number of irregularities at the company.
Minister of Finance Yusuf Anwar said his ministry would first appoint an independent auditor to audit the company's assets, performance and legal affairs.
"The government currently controls Dipasena, 100 percent. The company has great prospects for becoming the world's largest shrimp farming company, with promising returns for the state," the minister said late on Thursday.
Dipasena assets, previously owned by tycoon Sjamsul Nursalim, who is also chairman of the Gajah Tunggal Group, were transferred to the government in 2002 -- via the now-defunct Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) -- to partly settle Sjamsul's Rp 28 trillion (US$3.014 million) debts.
The debts were the result of the channeling of Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI) funds to support Sjamsul's Bank Dagang Nasional Indonesia cope with massive runs during the monetary crisis in 1997.
In 1998, IBRA claimed Dipasena was worth about Rp 20 trillion. However, an audit conducted by IBRA in 2002 showed the company's assets were merely one-tenth of IBRA's figure, about Rp 2 trillion.
Confusion over the exact value of the company's assets had discouraged potential investors from taking over the firm.
The Ministry of Finance's reappraisal of Dipasena assets was aimed to clarify the firm's current asset value.
At present, Dipasena assets are managed by state asset management firm PT Perusahaan Pengelola Aset (PPA), which is under the auspices of the finance ministry. PPA is tasked with managing unsold assets previously handled by IBRA.
In a bid to help revitalize Dipasena, Yusuf said the government would immediately inject fresh capital into the company once it had completed the firm's financial and legal audit.
Dipasena, which has a concession of about 180,000 hectares of land for shrimp farming in Lampung, can only utilize 30 percent of its production capacity due to its lack of working capital.