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undreds of mining permits have been revoked following companies'€™ failure to obtain the Clean and Clear (CNC) status.

The director general for mineral and coal at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, R. Sukhyar, said on Wednesday that local administrations in four provinces have revoked 332 mining permits, locally known as IUP, of mineral and coal companies.

Out of the total number, 85 IUP were in Central Sulawesi, 134 in Jambi, 106 in South Sumatra and seven in West Kalimantan.

'€œMost of the revocation was due to overlapping mining areas. As for coal-rich Kalimantan, where around 2,600 permits exist, we don'€™t see local administrations being serious in dealing with the mining permits,'€ Sukhyar said.

The government is struggling to keep a huge amount of licenses for mining activities issued by local administrations, including regents and governors, in order, following the decentralization policy,

The huge amount of licenses has created difficulties for both local administrations and the central government in supervising mining companies'€™ adherence to paying royalties to the government, for example.

In an attempt to deal with the problem the government requires mining companies to obtain a CNC status, which indicates that their activities are in line with the local administration'€™s environmental policies and that all legal requirements, including for the use of land, have been met.

The CNC policy has been implemented in the last few years and the deadline to meet the requirements has passed. However, figures from the ministry shows that as many as 4,868 mining permits are still non-CNC. That represents almost 45 percent of the total 10,857 IUPs nationwide.

Sukhyar said a new deadline had been set for all local administrations to take action on non-CNC statuses by this December.

His office has also cooperated with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to supervise the mining sector.

In a recent report, KPK, which is supervising 12 natural resource-rich provinces, found that more than 4,500 mining companies in 11 provinces are indebted to the government for failing to pay land rental fees and royalties amounting to Rp 5.42 trillion (US$468.15 million). It has yet to release data for the 12th province.

Following the supervision, figures showed that the realization of non-tax state revenue from the mining sector reached Rp 14 trillion between January and May this year, compared to only Rp 9 trillion in the same period last year.

Under the state budget the target of non-tax state revenue from the mineral and coal sector is set at
Rp 39 trillion.

'€” JP/Raras Cahyafitri