JAKARTA (May 22): Indonesia will exempt nickel pig iron, which makes up the majority of its nickel exports, and some refined palm oil products from its planned centralisation of commodity exports, a senior government minister said.
Under a policy announced this week, exports of coal, palm oil and ferroalloys must go through a state company, with a transition phase expected to start from June 1. The resource-rich nation is the world’s top exporter of thermal coal, palm oil and nickel products.
Nickel pig iron (NPI), a low purity nickel metal, will be exempted from the policy, while ferronickel was included due to its iron content, chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto told reporters late on Thursday after a meeting with some industry groups.
Ferronickel has a higher content of nickel than NPI, but both products fall under the same code used in global trade tracking. Indonesia’s exports under this category totalled US$16.4 billion (RM65.01 billion) last year, statistics bureau data showed. The industry says NPI accounts for the vast majority of nickel metal exports.
The secretary general of APNI, a nickel miners’ group, welcomed the exemption, noting that only a few smelters in the country produced ferronickel.
“So this means it will be fine, but we must see the technical implementation later,” Meidy Katrin Lengkey said after the meeting with government officials.
A person in the palm oil industry who attended the meeting said exports of crude palm oil, refined, bleached, deodorised (RBD) palm oil and RBD palm olein will go through the new agency, while their derivative products will be exempted.
The products included in the centralised export plan represent around 90% of the palm oil exports last year, statistics bureau data showed. Last year, Indonesia exported 23.6 million tonnes of crude palm oil and its refined products worth US$24.4 billion.
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