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A consortium of local governments in West Nusa Tenggara has been approached by several foreign companies — including Amsterdam-based Amstel Securities and Northstar Pacific Partners ­— about teaming up to purchase stakes in US-based Newmont Mining’s subsidiary, which operates in the province, a local government official said on Monday.

The involvement of foreign firms was immediately slammed by State Enterprises Minister Sofyan Djalil, who said that such involvement would go against the legally mandated scheme to bring the company’s assets under local ownership.

The discussions came as the government postponed its plan to recruit an independent appraiser to value the stakes in PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara for another two weeks. Newmont claims that the total value of all NNT assets is $4.9 billion, well below a 2008 valuation of $6.1 billion. The government had been holding out for a price of less than $4 billion, but now appears to be adopting a more realistic stance.

“We have just met with the Amstel people today,” Heriyadi Rachmat, chief of West Nusa Tenggara’s mining department, said in a telephone interview on Monday with the Jakarta Globe. “The company presented their profile and explained to us how they intended to finance the purchase of Newmont’s shares.”

“However, we did not make any promises to them since the valuation of the shares has not been determined yet,” he added. Rachmat said Amstel was willing to help the governments buy as many shares as they wanted.

Provincial spokesman Andy Hadianto acknowledged that Northstar Pacific, a private equity arm of US-based Texas Pacific Group, was one of several companies that had shown an interest in helping them acquire the Newmont stake. But Rachmat said that the company had not met with the local governments yet.

“Only Amstel has presented their profile to us officially,” he said. “State-owned companies like PT Aneka Tambang and PT Timah have also expressed interest, but only verbally so far.”

Patrick Walujo, Northstar’s chief executive, did not respond to a request for comment.

When told of the plan, Sofyan criticized the governments’ plans to meet with foreign companies.

“I think that the SOEs should be the ones to participate,” he said. “If foreign companies buy the Newmont stakes then the purchases would not be locally controlled.”

“The contract stipulates that after a certain length of time, Newmont must sell its stakes to an Indonesian entity,” Sofyan added. “If foreign companies are able to purchase [the stakes] then Newmont might just buying them back under separate cover.”

In May, a consortium of three local governments announced an ambitious bid to buy the entire 31 percent stake in NNT that Newmont must divest by 2010.

The group could end up going head-to-head with SOEs, which are also reportedly interested in the unit’s Batu Hijau copper and gold mine in Sumbawa.

West Sumbawa district head Zulkifli Muhadli said the consortium, comprised of the governments of West Nusa Tenggara Province and West Sumbawa and Sumbawa districts, had created a company to bid for the stake.