Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Indonesia plans to put out a nickel export tax policy in the third quarter of the year. This is because t...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Indonesia plans to put out a nickel export tax policy in the third quarter of the year. This is because the government wants to get more money from exports and encourage more domestic production of higher-value goods, a senior official said on Monday.
Indonesia used to export a lot of nickel ore. In 2020, it will stop exporting nickel that hasn't been processed in order to get more investment in its smelting industry. However, most of the investment has gone into making nickel pig iron (NPI) and ferronickel, which have a low nickel content.
In an interview, Septian Hario Seto, who is a Deputy Coordinating Minister for Maritime and Investment Affairs, said that the tax will be put on NPI and ferronickel.
He wouldn't say much about the planned tax rates, but he did say that the government would decide based on the price of nickel and the price of coal, which is used as an energy source in production.
Indonesia has a lot of nickel, which the government wants to use to make batteries for electric cars and also to assemble electric cars in Indonesia.
South Korean companies like LG and Hyundai had made deals to invest in Indonesia so that it could make batteries and EVs. President Joko Widodo also wants Tesla to invest in the country. During a recent trip to the United States, he met with Tesla founder Elon Musk.
To protect ore deposits, the government is still thinking about whether or not to limit the number of smelters that make NPI or ferronickel.
Seto said that the government hasn't ruled out the idea of putting a limit on the number of smelters that make NPI or ferronickel, but that there has been no decision yet.
He said that Indonesia wants its ore reserves to last for about 25 to 30 years.
Seto said that the smelters in Indonesia that make NPI and ferronickel have a total installed capacity of about 1.3 million tonnes of nickel content.
