June 05, 1999
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| June 05, 1999 | atimes.com | |
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| Southeast Asia Indonesia's publicly listed firms lose $12bn in 1998 JAKARTA - Publicly listed companies posted a total loss of Rp96.7 trillion ($12 billion) in 1998 and banks accounted for Rp86.7 trillion of the total loss, a researcher said. But that may be just part of the story. David Chang of PT Trimegah Sekuritas said in a summary report that out of 274 publicly listed companies only 191 had issued their financial report by the April 30 deadline. He said poorly-performing companies that needed more time for window dressing tended to delay publishing their financial reports. Chang said a negative spread in interest contributed Rp16.2 trilion to the total loss suffered by banks. Their operational losses totaled Rp85.3 trillion. In 1997, they still posted a profit of Rp3.8 trillion in interest and earned an operational profit of Rp103.7 trillion. Chang also noted that provision for non-performing assets rose from Rp2.1 trillion in 1997 to Rp66.6 trillion in 1998, contributing to the large losses. Chang's report stated that the delisting of 17 companies from the Jakarta Stock Exchange reduced the number of listed companies from 283 to 266 at the end of 1997. ''Now 37 companies may not be able to meet the criteria of a public company, although their performance improved this year, and most of them could pull out from the threat of being delisted,'' he said. Most of Indonesian conglomerates have collapsed, he noted, because of the prolonged financial crisis. In 1998, only the Sinar Mas Group succeeded in generating positive earning. The Sinar Mas Group and listed state-owned companies could effectively stave off the crisis as their debts were relatively low and they have dollar-earning core businesses. ''Though they have large debts in foreign exchange, the debts are well hedged against the fluctuations of major currencies in the world,'' Chang said. He also revealed that conglomerates recorded a 25.4 percent growth in income to Rp73.8 trillion and a 43.6 percent rise in operational profit to Rp15.7 trillion but huge losses in foreign exchange completely depleted their income by the close of the year in 1998. Among the conglomerates, Astra Internationl suffered the largest losss of Rp3.5 trillion followed by Bakrie, which lost Rp2.1 trillion and the Salim Group at Rp1.6 trillion. The hardest hit by the crisis among the conglomerates were Ometraco, Bakrie, Dharmala and Modern. Ometraco's holding company Ometraco Corp. has been delisted and its bank, Bank Tiara, has been taken over by the government. None of the member companies of Ometraco published financial reports in 1998. | |||||||||
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