Indonesia's Listrik Negara Seeks $625 Million Funding for 2008

Link to the news at Bloomberg.com

Here is an interesting story, the state-owned electricity company has been losing money (since I don't know when). The 2003 report taken from their website shows a loss of 1.4e12 rupiah (equivalent to approximately 140e6 US dollars). Interestingly the report shows an expense of 2.165.000e6 rupiah (= 217e6 US dollars) labeled as "lain-lain". To me, labeling something as "miscellaneous" should raise concerns, especially when the amount shown is 1.5 times of the reported loss. Who in their right mind would invest in a company like this?

TXU and Reliant might be scratching their heads as to how an effectively monopolist loses money in the electricity business. Maybe PLN just does not charge their consumers enough to recover their costs, or maybe, just maybe it is an 'accounting glitch'.