Indonesia's state power firm to sign 5.7 trln rph loan

JAKARTA, April 17 (Reuters) - Indonesian state electricity company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) will sign a 5.71 trillion rupiah ($622 million) loan deal with five local banks to fund power plant projects, an official said on Thursday.

Yogo Pratomo, head a government project for the construction of power plants, told Reuters the loans would come from Bank Mandiri (BMRI.JK), Bank Central Asia (BCA) (BBCA.JK), Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) (BBRI.JK), Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) (BBNI.JK) and Bank Mega (MEGA.JK).

He said the deal would be signed on Friday and the money would go towards the construction of five power plants in Java with a total capacity of 3,470 megawatts.

Indonesia wants to build 10,000 MW of additional capacity to meet rising power demand as its economy expands and to cut down on consumption of expensive crude oil as its reserves dwindle.

PLN, the monopoly power supplier for Indonesia, has 24,000 MW of generating capacity but daily output is far below capacity because most of its plants are old and inefficient.

Some 30 percent of the plants use oil products such as diesel and fuel oil.

($1 = 9,186 rupiah) (Reporting by Nury Sybli; Writing by Harry Suhartono; Editing by Sugita Katyal and Alan Raybould)