JAKARTA. The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) claimed that the effort to increase the values of mineral commodities in Indonesia could potentially gain investments of up to USD 21 billion.
According to Arifin Tasrif, the Ministry of ESDM, one of the commodities that takes up the main role in raising investments in Indonesia is nickel. “Based on the United States Geological Survey (USGS), our nickel reserves are the highest in the world as 23% of global nickel reserves lie deep inside our land,” he proclaimed in the official statement received by idnfinancials.com today (25/11).
Additionally, the said survey mentioned Indonesia’s bauxite reserves as the sixth biggest in the world. Furthermore, Indonesia’s copper reserves are at the seventh and gold reserves at the fifth. For the record, Indonesia’s copper reserves covered 17% of the global copper reserves.
Tasrif also claimed that currently, Indonesia is in the process of establishing more smelting facilities to increase the mineral values. The government even claimed to build 53 operating smelting facilities.
Based on the Ministry of ESDM data, Indonesia currently manages 19 existing units of smelting plants. Specifically, 13 of them are nickel smelters, which was projected to increase to 30 units.
“We hope the progress [of the smelting plant constructions] would be accelerated in 2022 as 2023 is the time limit to submit the concentrate export license,” Tasrif explained. (KR/ZH)