Sri Mulyani Denies Texmaco's Claim On Rp8 Trillion BLBI Debt: The Debt Is Rp29 Trillion!

JAKARTA - Minister of Finance (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani revealed interesting facts about the involvement of the Texmaco Group in the polemic of the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Assistance (BLBI). In today's press statement, the state treasurer said that so far the conglomerate that was victorious in the 90s claimed that it only had an obligation of Rp8 trillion.

In fact, the Minister of Finance is very sure that Texmaco has debts of up to Rp29 trillion for the 1998 central bank bailout.

“In publications in the mass media, the owner even admitted that he only had a debt of 8 trillion. In fact, the deed of commitment states that he has a debt of Rp29 trillion-plus US$ 80.5 million," she said at a press conference with Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Mahfud MD in Jakarta, Thursday, December 23.

According to the Minister of Finance, the source of the problem occurred during the financial crisis about 20 years ago. It was said that the Texmaco engineering division had made loans of Rp8.06 trillion and US$ 1.24 million to financial institutions at that time.

Not only that, but the textile division of Texmaco also proposed the same effort by borrowing Rp5.28 trillion as well as loans in several foreign currencies, such as the French franc of 95,000, Japanese yen of 3 million, and several other currencies.

“The debt was in a bad state at the time of the crisis. Then the banks (which Texmaco borrowed from) got a bailout from the government. So, the bank's claim rights were then taken by the government through IBRA (National Bank Restructuring Agency)," she said.

On the way, the government called the Minister of Finance to help the Texmaco Group to get out of trouble by providing guarantees for the Letter of Credit at BNI. It is said that the owner of Texmaco, Marimutu Sinivasan, agreed to restructure debts in 23 subsidiaries.

This debt will later be borne by two new Texmaco holdings, namely PT Jaya Perkasa Engineering and PT Guna Prima Perdana.

The two-parent companies then issued exchangeable bonds to replace Texmaco's debts. This exchangeable bond itself has a coupon of 14 percent for bonds in rupiah and 7 percent in US dollars. Until the end of due, the two holdings could not pay the promised coupons.

“The Texmaco Group again defaulted on the exchangeable bond coupons issued. Thus, basically, the Texmaco Group has never paid the coupon of the debt that has been converted into exchangeable bonds,” said the Minister of Finance.

Then, in 2005, the government summoned Marimutu Sinivasan to acknowledge his debt to the government through Deed of Commitment No. 51. In addition, the Minister of Finance disclosed that Deed of Commitment No. 51 contained a stipulation that Marimutu Sinivasan would not sue the government.

"In its development, it did not fulfill the deed of commitment that he had signed himself. Instead, they filed a lawsuit against the government and sold the assets from the holding," she said.

Meanwhile, today the BLBI Task Force managed to confiscate assets from the Texmaco Group on 587 plots of land located in five locations, namely in Subang Regency, Sukabumi Regency, Pekalongan City, Batu City, and Padang City with a total area of 4.79 million square-meters.