Telkomsel acquisition deal

JAKARTA (JP): PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel), one of the country's three operators of the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications, finalized yesterday the sales of its shares to private companies through direct investment placement.

The documents were signed here by the president for Asia of PTT Telecom Netherlands, Jan Volbeda, the chief commissioner of PT Setdco Megacell Asia, Setiawan Djody, and a director of PT Telkom, Harry Supangkat.

Yesterday's signing ended the process of Telkomsel share acquisition, with 42.72 percent of the GSM operator belonging to Telkom, 35 percent to PT Indosat, 17.28 percent to PTT Telecom and 5 percent to Setdco.

Under yesterday's deal, PTT Telecom and Setdco finalized their payments for the share acquisition, by paying US$229.04 million and $83.79 million respectively to Telkomsel -- causing PTT Telecom to transfer $304 million for the deal and Setdco $88 million -- while Telkom paid $109.89 million.

Telkomsel was incorporated in 1995 with 49 percent of its shares owned by Indosat and 51 percent by Telkom, both of which are state-owned telecommunications providers listed on domestic and international stock exchanges.

Telkomsel's president, Koesmarihati Sugondo, said yesterday that her company currently has 85,000 customers or 28.3 percent of the 300,000 cellular telephone subscribers in Indonesia.

"We expect to increase the number of our subscribers to 150,000 by the end of this year and to 450,000 by the year 2000," Koesmarihati said.

Telkomsel will also increase its investment from Rp 450 billion at present to Rp 700 billion by the end of 1996. (icn)