Bank Mandiri readies standby loan for Antam?s ferronickel project

State-owned Bank Mandiri said it had allocated standby loan for the construction of a nickel smelting plant in Central Sulawesi, which was meant to anticipate possible cancellation of PT Aneka Tambang Tbk?s (Antam) plan to raise loan from a German bank, Koran Tempo reported Thursday.

?Bank Mandiri will provide standby L/C loan for Antam if it can not secure export credits from overseas,? the bank?s president director E.C.W. Neloe told reporters Tuesday.

Neloe said that they had held talks with Antam?s leaders about the matter, and that Antam had not yet submitted to it any loan proposal. Neloe declined to mention the amount of the loan allocated for Antam which would use it to build its third ferronickel plant, FeNi III, in Pomalaa, Central Sulawesi.

Earlier reports said that Antam had planned to borrow US$75 million from bank Mandiri.

Antam had estimated that the construction of the Pomalaa ferronickel plant would cost $360 million, and that $240 million-$255 million of the amount was expected to come from Germany?s bank IKB Hermes. The loan would be denominated in euro.

The strengthening of the euro against the U.S. dollar reportedly had caused Antam to consider cancelling its plan to raise loans from IKB Hermes.

Koran Tempo said that the disbursement of IKB Hermes? loan had initially been planned for April 1, 2003.

Antam?s spokesman Winardi said Wednesday that no decision had been made on the future of IKB Hermes? loan.

Meanwhile, the deputy to the state minister of state enterprises, Roes Ariawijaya, said that the deadline for the disbursement of IKB Hermes? loan was actually end-March. ?It is actually not an exact deadline,? he said.

Roes said that the strengthening of euro against the U.S. dollar had forced the government and Antam to consider the possibility of canceling the company?s plan to raise loan from IKB Hermes. (*)