PTBA will be listed on one of Canadian stock exchanges

Coal mine operator PT Tambang Batubara Bukit Asam (PTBA) which will sell about 15 percent of its shares during an initial public offering later this year will be also listed in one of Canadian stock exchanges in addition to the Jakarta Stock Exchange, Bisnis Indonesia reported on Wednesday.

The company?s finance director Abdul Aziz Nazori said in Jakarta on Tuesday that the government could sell its shares in the company through the Canadian stock exchange after six months of the listing.

"The Canadian stock exchange is one of ideal places for PTBA to trade its shares overseas because many major mining companies list their shares there," he added.

He, however, said that the final decision on the overseas listing had not been made. "We need to study the general outlook of the stock market before deciding the cross listing in such overseas market," he added.

About the company?s plan to purchase 20 percent of the East Kalimantan-based coal producer PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC), Aziz said that PTBA would either raise bank loans or issue bonds to finance the share purchase which would cost the company about Rp1.4 trillion.

He said that state owned Bank Mandiri and the Singaporean branch of the United States-based investment bank Merrill Lynch had already expressed their readiness to provide parts of the funds needed by PTBA to purchase KPC shares.

"We have not decided which one of the two financing alternatives. We still study which of the two is less costly," he said.

KPC, which operates a large coal mining area in East Kalimantan, is equally owned by world mining giants Rio Tinto and BP. Under its contracts of works, the company?s shareholders are required to divest 51 percent of their shares to local investors.

The provincial administration of East Kalimantan is still seeking business partners to buy 31 percent of the shares. PTBA has been named to purchase the 20 percent shares that have been allocated to the central government. (*)