Indonesia's Pertamina allocates 6.6 bln dollars of operation budget for next year

Indonesia's state-run oil and gas firm Pertamina has allocated an operation budget of 85 trillion rupiah (about 6.6 billion U.S. dollars) for next year, would mostly be obtained from foreign loans, the firm's executive said here on Wednesday.

The budget would be used to finance the firm's plans to further develop its upstream business and financing its investments in the country, Pertamina President Director Dwi Soetjipto.

He said that 40 percent of the budget would come from internal coffers and the remaining large portion of 60 percent would be sourced from foreign loans.

"Through this way we expect to see our net profit improved next year," Soetjipto said.

As of the third quarter this year, the firm posted a net profit of 2.83 billion U.S. dollars, the firm announced in its stakeholder meeting held last week.

That figure is double than it was throughout last year that stood at 1.42 billion U.S. dollars.

The significant net profit improvement in that period was generated by the firm's expanding earnings of 42.59 billion U.S. dollars, or 15 percent higher than the projected figure of 37.03 U.S. dollars.

Given the improving net profit figure, the state-run firm aims to get a net profit of 3.04 billion U.S. dollars by the end of the year, or 5.55 percent higher than the target initially set at 2.88 billion U.S. dollars. Endit