Merpati and IPTN sign deal for 16 CN-235 aircraft
Merpati and IPTN sign deal for 16 CN-235 aircraft
JAKARTA (JP): Merpati Nusantara, the airline subsidiary of
state-owned Garuda Indonesia, signed a deal yesterday with the
state-owned aircraft manufacturer PT IPTN on the supply of 16 CN-
235 aircraft worth US$147.2 million.
"We will lease the aircraft through Deutsche Morgan Greenfell,
a leasing company based in Germany," Merpati's president Budiarto
Subroto said after signing the deal with IPTN's senior vice
president/general manager Hari Laksono.
Budiarto said that Merpati and Morgan had agreed on a 10-year
lease contract with a monthly fee of US$70,000 per aircraft per
month.
Hari added that the related parties have yet to negotiate the
prices of spare parts and maintenance.
"The price of each aircraft is $9.2 million, without spare
parts. The total price, including spare parts, will be a maximum
30 percent higher than the aircraft buying price," he said.
Morgan had no representative at yesterday's signing ceremony.
Sources at Merpati said that neither IPTN nor Merpati had been
informed of when Morgan will sign agreements with each of the two
companies.
Yesterday's deal remained a mystery to reporters invited to
attend the signing ceremony, as most of the details of the
transactions were not disclosed.
Even the name of the deal was confusing. The Merpati chief
first defined the contract in his prepared speech as a purchase
agreement but later corrected it and replaced the word purchase
with "supply".
Merpati created a controversy in October when its chief
refused to lease 16 CN-235s from a national private company,
owned by politically well-connected businesspeople, due to what
he called exorbitantly high leasing fees.
Merpati's president, Ridwan Fataruddin, was then reprimanded
by the minister of transportation, who argued that state
companies should promote domestic products.
Ridwan was fired in late October.
Merpati currently owns 14 CN-235-10s as government equity in
the company. The deal signed yesterday was for the procurement of
16 CN-235-220s, not the CN-235-200 type which set off the
controversy between the Merpati chief and the minister of
transportation.
Merpati signed a letter of intent with IPTN in November last
year to buy a total of 56 CN-235-220s by 2019.
Several firms had been negotiating with Merpati for the
leasing of the CN-235-220s, including PT Multi Guna, a domestic
private firm which lowered its offered monthly leasing fee from
$110,000 to $92,000.
No officials would explain yesterday why Morgan was selected
and whether the company was the only party which offered a
$70,000 monthly leasing fee, the rate originally suggested by
former Merpati president Ridwan.
The CN-235 is produced by Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara
(IPTN) in Bandung, which is chaired by State Minister of Research
and Technology B.J. Habibie.
IPTN's executive vice president for commercial affairs, Heru
Santoso, said yesterday that there are currently 30 CN-235
aircraft in operation, 14 of which are operated by Merpati, six
by the country's Air Force, seven by the Air Force of the United
Arab Emirates and three by IPTN for test operations.
He said that Merpati will receive three CN-235-220s in the
second semester of next year, while the remaining 13 aircraft
will be delivered periodically until 1998.
In addition to the 16 CN-235-220s ordered by Merpati, IPTN
also claims to have received 12 orders from several other parties
for the 35-seat turbo-prop planes.
The Malaysian Air Force will buy six CN-235s (to be delivered
in 1996/1997) and Brunei's Armed Forces will buy one CN-235 (to
be delivered next year, with an option for three CN-235 maritime
patrol aircraft/MPA).
Indonesia's Air Force and Navy have ordered three and two CN-
235-MPAs, respectively.(icn)
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