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ublicly listed coal producer PT Bukit Asam (PTBA) said on Tuesday that the company and its partners under the Rajawali Group would likely change the ownership composition of their subsidiaries — PT Bukit Asam Transpasific Railway (BATR) and PT Bukit Asam Banko (BAB).

“There will be changes in ownership involving our subsidiaries in mining [BAB] and infrastructure [BATR]. Our partners will become a majority shareholder in infrastructure but a minority in
mining. Meanwhile, PTBA will be a majority owner in mining and a minority in infrastructure,” PTBA’s president director, Milawarma, said on Tuesday.

BAB is now 65 percent owned by PTBA and 35 percent by PT Rajawali Asia Resources. BAB was formed to work a mining site in Banko Tengah, South Sumatra; however, BAB cannot carry out mining activities because under an existing regulation, PTBA, as the holder of the mining permit for the Banko Tengah area, is prohibited from transferring the mining rights to another firm.

PTBA and BAB are awaiting the revision of this government regulation, which would allow the transfer of the mining rights and would hand ownership over to BAB.

Meanwhile, PTBA also has an option to increase its ownership in BATR, which currently stands at 10 percent. Meanwhile, PT Transpacific Railway Infrastructure, a subsidiary of PT Rajawali Corporation, the holding company of the Rajawali Group founded by Peter Sondakh, holds 80 percent and a Chinese company, the China Railway Group Limited, owns 10 percent.

“We have an opportunity to increase our stake by 20 percent, to have an overall stake of 30 percent, in BATR,” said Hannato, PTBA’s corporate secretary. However, he did not give a specific time frame for the plan.

BATR was established to construct a 300-kilometer railroad to transport coal mined from BAB’s mining area in Tanjung Enim in South Sumatra to the Tarahan coal terminal in Lampung. The project is worth US$1.3 billion.

The company expected to begin construction on the railroad in mid-2013 and hoped to start transporting coal in 2017, Milawarma said.

PTBA reported a 13 percent rise in its coal sales volume to 7.36 million tons in the first half of the year, up from 6.54 million tons last year.

Milawarma said the company was looking to increase its sales volume to India in a move anticipating slowing demand from China.

“We are still assessing the plan. We see that the Indian market is quite large. Most of our sales to South China are for coal with a calorie rank below 6,000, which is typically India’s needs,” Milawarma said, adding that sales to India would be around 1 million to 2 million metric tons.

PTBA is aiming to sell 18.66 million metric tons of coal by the year’s end, a 39 percent increase from 13.47 million metric tons last year.

— JP/Raras Cahyafitri