Column: Electric dreams turn into a nightmare for battery metals
A sector that was once racing to build new supply has been closing mines and deferring projects as low prices bite into the cost curve.
Indonesia launched on Monday an online system to track movements of nickel and tin from mines to domestic processing facilities to improve accountability and government revenue, authorities said.
The system, known as SIMBARA, was first implemented in 2022 to track coal, with a plan to widen its use to other minerals.
Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of coal. It is the top global producer of nickel, and one of the largest producers of tin.
Speaking at the launch, Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said the system had improved governance in the coal sector, including by forcing companies to pay liabilities to the state, and she hoped to replicate this with nickel and tin.
For coal, the system monitors compliance on documentation of mining quotas, known as RKAB, all the way to export papers, flows of funds, logistics, the people involved, as well as the goods, Sri Mulyani said.
A senior government official told Reuters last week that for tin and nickel, the system will first track transportations, including inter-island shipments, from mines to domestic processing facilities and will be linked with RKAB.
“With this system, we can work tidily, consistently, firm, authoritative and without burdening companies,” Sri Mulyani said.
Improvement in compliance is expected to increase tin and nickel miners’ royalty payments by between 5 trillion to 10 trillion rupiah ($308 million-$616 million) in a year, Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Affairs, Luhut Pandjaitan, said at the same event.
Nickel miners group APNI hoped SIMBARA will help prevent illegal mining and avoid oversupply such as what happened in recent years, secretary general Meidy Katrin Lengkey said.
Through SIMBARA, authorities would be alerted if a smelter produces more nickel metal than they should be able to based on the amount of the ore they bought, she said, and the smelter would be required to explain where the extra ore came from.
“We hope, after this implementation, there will truly be a control and monitoring of all the process from upstream to downstream,” she said.
The government plans to further widen the system to track gold, copper, bauxite, manganese and other resources, Mining Minister Arifin Tasrif said.
Later on, the government will also link SIMBARA to compliance in manpower and environmental rules, Luhut said, adding sales by miners can be blocked by the system if they are found breaking the rules.
($1 = 16,220.0000 rupiah)
(By Fransiska Nangoy and Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by John Mair, Michael Perry and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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