PGN raises $150m in first overseas bond sale

PGN raises $150m in first overseas bond sale

PT Perusahaan Gas Negara (PGN), Indonesia's state-owned gas distributor, raised US$150 million from its first overseas bond sale, said Credit Suisse First Boston, the sale arranger.

The bonds mature in 2013 and pay interest of 7.5 percent, said Jon Pratt, Credit Suisse First Boston Inc's head of debt in Asia, said in Hong Kong.

They were priced at a discount to yield 7.75 percent.

Investors have the right to sell the bonds back in sever years.

PGN delayed the sale last month after a bombing of the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta killed 12 people. The company earlier said it may need $600 million in the next five years to build tankers and pipelines to transport compressed natural gas to power stations in Indonesia's east.

Indonesia's government plans to sell as much as 30 percent of the company in an initial share in October to help finance a $200 million natural gas pipeline and help cover a 2003 budget deficit estimated at Rp 35.1 trillion.

PGN is building a 180-kilometer pipeline linking Grissik in South Sumatera province to West Java.

The company, which has gas distribution monopoly, plans to start construction in 2004, complete the project in four years and start delivering gas through the pipeline by 2010.

Meanwhile, PGN's president Washington Simanjuntak told Dow Jones on Tuesday that the company would issue more bonds in the first quarter of next year.

He didn't provide details.

Moody's Investors Service has assigned a B3 senior unsecured rating to the issue, while Standard & Poor's Ratings Services has assigned a B- foreign-currency rating. -- Agencies