RI not to raise fuel price

RI not to raise fuel price

JAKARTA (JP): President Faisal Abda'oe, president of the
state-owned oil company Pertamina, said yesterday that there has
been no recent indication that the government will increase fuel
prices.

Speaking to reporters in Cilacap after the ground-breaking
ceremony for the debottlenecking project at the Cilacap refinery,
he said that the situation in Indonesia requires the government
to consider non-economic factors before deciding to increase fuel
prices.

Abda'oe was commenting on the World Bank's latest report on
Indonesia which, among other things, proposes that the government
raise fuel prices as a way to increase the state budget surplus.

According to Abda'oe, the World Bank's proposal is only based
on economic factors. "But our policy for deciding fuel prices is
not as simple as that," he noted.

He said the debottlenecking project, scheduled to be completed
in 1999, will increase the capacity of the Cilacap refinery from
300,000 barrels a day to 348,000 barrels a day. (13)