"If you are going to sell company shares, you should sell it if it is moving and not if it's fairly cheap," he told Reuters.

"I can imagine that one day all government enterprises, if they become healthy, will go public," he added. "It is possible the Indonesian government owns nothing. Only one thing, the responsibility for economic and political stability."

Habibie was commenting on possible confusion among foreign investors following recent changes in the country's privatisation policy.

The proposed sale of state-owned steel firm Krakatau Steel to Ispat International NV was abandoned in June after domestic protests that it was being sold off cheaply without other firms being offered the chance to make bids.

On Friday, the government said it would not sell a majority stake in state cementmanufacturer Semen Gresik as it had previously agreed.

An official in the state enterprises ministry said only a 14-per cent stake in Gresik would be sold against earlier plans of a 35-per cent stake and promises to eventually hand over a majority share to the winning bidder.

Gresik is one of five already partially-floated state companies in which the government has said it will further dilute its stake. Another seven companies are scheduled to be floated for the first time.

The plan was reached in agreement with the International Monetary Fund as part of reforms in exchange for a bailout of about $47 billion to help Indonesia overcome a ravaging economic crisis. The privatisation policy is expected to bring in about $1.5 billion.

"If I could survive without selling any shares, I'm not going to sell any shares up until those companies have recovered," Habibie said.

"Of course some are already in the pipline, so we have made the due diligence."He said some of these privatisations were launched by hispredecessor, former president Suharto who resigned on May 21 after 32 years in power.

"He made a decoupling of economy and politics where even the economy was not transparent," Habibie said. "It was not based on the law as I am doing now."

"We have... a different approach; more democratic and more transparent, a more prosperity approach... not only by wording, by doing. Based on that we get our credibility back."

Habibie said he would prefer to go in for direct placements rather than floating companies on the share market.

The advantages, he said, were that the purchaser of a large stake would bring in knowhow, infrastructure, credibility and money.

The funds from the privatisation of healthy state enterprises, he said, would be ploughed back into society.

"The vision is that one day 95 per cent of our society consider themselves as middle class," Habibie said. "Of the other five per cent, two per cent are super-rich and three per cent are living under the poverty line where they have to besubsidised... that's the dream."