Indonesian State Firms to Be Pushed for Double Expenditures: Official

The Indonesian government will push state-owned companies to double expenditures to keep the economic downturn from accelerating, according to local media on Thursday.

We will push capital expenditures higher,the Jakarta Globe daily quoted State Minister for State Enterprises Sofyan Djalil as saying.

The capital expenditures of 35 major state-owned companies would rise to 32.5 trillion rupiah (2.7 billion U.S. dollars) next year from 16.91 trillion rupiah this year, the minister said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said that the government was expecting economic growth of between 4.5 percent and 5 percent next year, lower than its earlier forecast of 6 percent.

State oil and gas company PT Pertamina would contribute the most to the additional spending (about 43.3 percent), some 56.7 percent of which would be allocated to upstream investment, Sofyan said.

Sofyan said that in spite of the gloomy market outlook, the government would proceed with the initial public offerings of a number of companies that had received approval from the House of Representatives this year.

The government may also privatize plantation firms pending approval from the House, he added.

Source: CRIEnglish