The Ministry Of SOEs Asks Sri Mulyani To Disburse IDR 7.5 Trillion So That Garuda Indonesia Can Still 'fly'

JAKARTA - The Ministry of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) has made various efforts to save Garuda Indonesia so that the national airline can still 'fly'. One of them is by negotiating with the Ministry of Finance to disburse a bailout amounting to IDR 7.5 trillion for PT Garuda Indonesia (Persero) Tbk.

Deputy Minister of SOEs II Kartika Wirjoatmodjo said this effort was carried out as a form of restructuring support for companies facing debt problems.

Furthermore, the man who is familiarly called Tiko explained that the funds for the capital injection to Garuda Indonesia were sourced from government investment funds in the context of the 2020 national economic recovery (IP-PEN) which was prepared for the state-owned airline.

"In terms of funding, actually there is still an IP-PEN program of IDR 7.5 trillion which is still in a temporary account at the Ministry of Finance. At the beginning of 2020, it was IDR 8.5 trillion, which had disbursed IDR 1 trillion," he said in a meeting with Commission VI of the House of Representatives (DPR), Tuesday, November 9.

For your information, the provision of bailout funds has been approved in the form of a mandatory convertible bond or MCB. The mandatory convertible bond agreement or OWK was signed by Garuda Indonesia in 2020 with PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur as the investment implementer from the Ministry of Finance.

The value and average is IDR 8.5 trillion. In early 2021, the government disbursed a bailout fund of IDR 1 trillion.

Meanwhile, in order to disburse Garuda's bailout funds for the next phase, the company needs to meet various requirements and parameters. One of them is the improvement of company performance.

"However, the parameters cannot be met and we will negotiate IDR 7.5 trillion with the Ministry of Finance, basically this IDR 7.5 trillion can be negotiated with the parameters and the scheme. Because with the parameters and schemes in 2020 nothing has been met," he explained.

"We are negotiating how we can use IP-PEN accounts that have been disbursed but have not been utilized, but of course with different schemes and KPIs. Of course, we ask for support," he continued.

Tiko said that Garuda needed this funding to take legal proceedings with lessors and creditors. Because creditors need the Government's commitment to support Garuda so that it can operate during the renegotiation process in the next four to five months

"The hope is 90 million US dollars for the legal process. Because at the beginning there was a token from the government to show a commitment to solving the problem. But the rest was disbursed after the restructuring process was agreed to add new capital. This will be conditional depending on negotiations. We need tokens to keep Garuda flying," he said.