JakartaPost-July 22, 2024
The government has launched an online tracking system for nickel and tin shipments to increase state revenue and improve governance in the mining sector. Already implemented for coal shipments since 2022, the Mineral and Coal Information System (Simbara) has now been expanded to encompass nickel and tin and is to be applied to other metallic minerals in the future. Resource-rich Indonesia is the world’s biggest producer of nickel and one of the largest producers of tin. Simbara will enable the government to track the supply of nickel and tin from mines to domestic smelters. Finance Ministry Budget Director General Isa Rachmatarwata said the government had launched the online tracking system for nickel and tin shipments given the two commodities’ increasingly strategic role in national and global economic development. “This is to continue the successful [implementation of] Simbara for coal. Today, we begin expanding the use of Simbara to nickel and tin, both of which are increasingly [important] for the national economy,” he said during the Simbara launch ceremony broadcast live on Monday. He went on to say that the system’s implementation for coal had prevented illegal mining and increased state revenue collected from the sector. Indonesia’s mined nickel production jumped from under 800,000 tons in 2019 to 1.8 million tons in 2023, when it accounted for 50 percent of global output, according to data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Last year, authorities pursued a corruption investigation across the government that led to delays in the issuance of nickel mining quotas. The country also grappled with a corruption case involving state-owned tin mining firm PT Timah, which is estimated to have caused Rp 271 trillion (US$17 billion) in state losses. Read more at:
