Semen Andalas will export its products

JAKARTA (JP): PT Semen Andalas Indonesia, which suffered losses during the first seven months due to its increasing stockpile, will export 10,000 tons of cement a month, said the company's president, Martin R. Wilkes.

"The trade minister has allowed us to export a small amount of our products and we hope we can do it in the next two weeks," Wilkes told The Jakarta Post at a reception commemorating the 20th anniversary of PT Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa at the Jakarta Convention Center on Tuesday.

Semen Andalas, inaugurated in 1983 in Aceh, has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million tons, or 3,000 tons per day, while demand for its products averaged at only 2,000 tons a day, so that its stockpile as of June 30 reached 4,472 tons.

Under a government-approved arrangement set by the Indonesian Cement Association, cement producers are assigned to sell their products at designated areas. Semen Andalas' market area covers Aceh, North Sumatra and Riau.

Minister of Industry Tunky Ariwibowo said Tuesday that the government is easing restrictions on the exports of cement, particularly by Semen Andalas and the West Sumatra-based PT Semen Padang, to help overcome their problems caused by marketing difficulties.

Tunky acknowledged that his ministry and the Ministry of Trade were still discussing the details of the government's policy on the cement exports by the two companies.

The marketing difficulties encountered by the two firms were contradictory to the recent shortage of supplies on the domestic market, which prompted the government to assign state-owned companies to import cement.

Tunky is convinced that the export policy will not cause another shortage of supplies nor any price instability.

"We have two floating terminals in Lampung and East Java, which store cement supplied by both domestic producers and imports for market operations," Tunky said.

Meanwhile, the president of Indocement, Sudwikatmono, told the press that his company will expand the annual production capacity of its plants from 9.4 million tons to 14.5 million tons by the end of 1997.

Indocement is the largest cement producer controlling almost 50 percent of the country's total output.(kod)