JAKARTA, Dec 18 - Indonesia's state-owned miner PT Inalum expects to finalise a deal this week to take majority control of the local unit of global mining giant Freeport McMoRan Inc, the company's chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday.
The deal will close "hopefully this week", said Budi Gunadi Sadikin, adding that a conclusion looked "highly likely."
Inalum was proposing to sell a 10 percent stake in PT Freeport Indonesia to Papua, the country's easternmost province where the giant Grasberg mine is located, for $819 million, he said.
(By Fergus Jensen, Bernadette Christina Munthe and Ed Davies; Editing by Adrian Croft)