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)