Staff Of Erick Thohir Regarding Pertamina Asked To Acquire Brazilian Companies: During Economics And Good, Okay

Special Staff to the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Arya Sinulingga. (Photo: Mery Handayani/VOI)

JAKARTA - Special Staff (Staffsus) of the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN), Arya Sinulingga opened his voice about PT Pertamina (Persero) who was asked to acquire a Brazilian sugar and ethanol producing company.

He said Pertamina was expanding or expanding its business.

The request was conveyed by the Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Menko Marves) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan. Luhut said the monitoring was at the direction of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

Furthermore, Arya said, expansion is needed because companies will not be able to meet the energy needs of the community if they only rely on domestic natural resources.

"Indeed, Pertamina has to expand, and currently Pertamina is expanding. He is expanding, right, we are not enough just in Indonesia, our oil source is not enough. Indeed, Pertamina must expand, and Pertamina is still in the expansion process, in several countries it has entered," Arya told reporters at the Ministry of SOEs Office, Jakarta, Wednesday, June 12.

Regarding the request from Jokowi and Luhut to acquire foreign companies to Brazil, Arya said, as long as the company is good, his party will support it.

"So if you are asked to go to Brazil, it's not something extraordinary, as long as it (has value) is economical and good, yes, okay. How come other countries go to Indonesia, can't we go to other countries?," he said.

But unfortunately, Arya admitted that he could not open further regarding the acquisition plan. The reason is that in the acquisition process, there is a lot of sensitive information that cannot be conveyed to the public. For example related to offers in acquisition tenders and so on.

"Just wait, sometimes expansion actions have business elements that we can't open, right. Because for example there is something, we will go out of tender later, people will see if everything can be done for us," said Arya.