JAKARTA: Distressed state construction company PT Waskita Karya of Indonesia says it won’t be able to deposit funds for the payment of interest and the repayment of principal for its rupiah bonds due Aug 6, according to a filing.
The rupiah-denominated notes of the heavily indebted builder have a total outstanding of 135.5 billion rupiah (US$8.9mil), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The failure to make payments came after the company also missed a coupon payment due May 30, Waskita said.
Waskita’s total debt ballooned to more than 60 trillion rupiah at the end of 2022, from around three trillion rupiah in 2014 – the year President Joko Widodo took office – as the leader of South-East Asia’s biggest economy pushed through his legacy-defining infrastructure projects.
In the period since the president took the helm, the debt load of the country’s four-biggest construction firms, including Waskita and PT Wijaya Karya, have swelled to around 130 trillion rupiah as of the end of the first quarter.
The crushing debt burden led Waskita to seek bondholders’ approval to defer payments of some of its obligations earlier this year as it seeks to restructure its debt. — Bloomberg
