Singapore first stop on RI asset sale road show

Singapore first stop on RI asset sale road show

SINGAPORE (AFP): An international roadshow for the sale of a major Indonesian commercial bank will begin in Singapore next week, the chief of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) said in remarks published here Wednesday.

IBRA, buoyed by the successful sale of Indonesian automotive giant PT Astra International to a Singapore-led consortium last month, hopes to clear a backlog of sales of other Indonesian assets in a bid to raise much-needed cash.

Next up on the block is Bank Central Asia, from which IBRA hoped to raise Rp 3 trillion (US$404 million), IBRA chairman Cacuk Sudarijanto told Singapore's Straits Times.

"Singapore will be the starting point for our international marketing," for the bank, he said.

"After the Astra sale, there has (been) keen interest here in the various assets that IBRA has for sale," he added.

From Singapore, the roadshow will head to Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, New York and San Francisco.

IBRA, which is under Indonesia's finance ministry, has announced plans to sell within the year equity in at least 20 companies, and a good portion of 1,105 properties or bank offices, in a bid to raise $5.1 billion by December for the Indonesian budget.

However, Sudarijanto has said it will only sell 10 to 15 percent of Bank Central Asia instead of its initial target of more than 30 percent if the price offered by bidders is not high enough.

Bank Central Asia was a venture between the children of former Indonesian leader Soeharto and a friend, Liem Sioe Liong. It was later taken over by the government and nationalized following a bank run amid the fall of Soeharto in 1998.

The impetus to sell the Indonesian assets also comes from the International Monetary Fund, which has urged Jakarta to raise money to balance its national budget as part of its economic and financial commitments under a multi-billion dollar bailout package.