Bengkulu Bank Becomes The Third BPD Whose Shares Purchased By The Chairul Tanjung Conglomerate

JAKARTA - The Chairul Tanjung conglomerate through PT Mega Corpora is ready to take over a number of shares in PT Bank Bengkulu. Mega Corpora will inject a certain amount of capital into the regional bank to meet the minimum core capital requirement to become a BUKU II Bank, which is IDR1 trillion this year.

Head of the Division of Corporate Secretary of Bank Bengkulu Fanny Irfansyah said that Bank Bengkulu had received an official letter of approval to purchase the company's shares from Mega Corpora. Next, the share purchase action is just waiting for the administrative process.

"The official letter of approval for the purchase of shares from PT Mega Corpora has been submitted to Bank Bengkulu. We are currently preparing an administrative process for PT MC to deposit funds for the purchase of Bank Bengkulu shares," Fanny told VOI, Wednesday, November 18.

However, Fanny has not been able to mention the portion of the share purchase made by CT. This will be determined at the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders (EGMS) of Bank Bengkulu which will be held at the end of this November.

For your information, Chairul previously owned shares in two other regional banks, namely PT Bank Central Sulawesi and PT Bank SulutGo. The share ownership in the two banks is 24.90 percent each.

The Bengkulu Provincial DPRD leader admitted that he did not agree with the plan of the Bengkulu Bank management to sell some of its shares to PT Mega Corpora. Deputy Chairman of the Bengkulu Provincial DPRD, Suharto, assessed that there are still many other ways the company can fulfill its core capital, apart from selling shares to companies outside the region.

Suharto was worried that if most of the shares in the bank owned by the Bengkulu Provincial Government were owned by large companies, management authority would become divided and it would be more difficult to include regional interests.

"Those whose names have been invested in an organization, of course they have rights according to the existing portion," said the Gerindra Party politician in Bengkulu, quoted from Antara, Wednesday, November 18.

Previously, President Commissioner of Bank Bengkulu, Ridwan Nurazi, said that the sale of a portion of Bank Bengkulu's shares to PT Mega Corpora was to increase the status of Bank Bengkulu to become a commercial bank for business activities (BUKU) II.

According to Suharto, the issue of the Bengkulu Bank's shortage of core capital amounting to Rp134 billion can still be handled by the regional government in Bengkulu itself, so it is deemed not necessary to involve other parties.

One of them, he said, was by encouraging the village government in Bengkulu to invest in Bengkulu Bank by buying shares using village funds.

"It only remains to be asked by the regents to make a regulation so that the village funds can be used to buy Bengkulu Bank shares. In Bengkulu there are 1,600 villages and if each village donates Rp10 million, how much money will that be," he explained.

"If you only look for Rp130 billion, it is small if the DPRD has intervened, because if there are 10 districts / cities in Bengkulu plus provinces, you cannot search that much," he added.