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Germany complains RI nickel export ban will ruin ‘struggling’ steel industry
Germany is among European countries worried about Indonesia's nickel ore export ban, with one visiting senior official saying it may prove detrimental to the German steel industry.
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Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) chairman Bahlil Lahadalia, together with representatives from the Indonesian Nickel Mining Association (APNI) and the Processing and Smelting Companies Association (AP3I) share a light moment after a meeting on nickel ore exports in Jakarta on Tuesday. (The Jakarta Post/Adrian Wail Akhlas)
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upporting a European Union decision to take Indonesia to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a visiting senior official said Germany was “not happy” with Jakarta’s decision to fast track its nickel ore export ban and the impact it was having on a core German industrial pillar.
Speaking to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday, the director general for Asia and the Pacific at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, Petra Sigmund, said Indonesia’s policy would severely affect the productivity of German steel producers amid global headwinds in manufacturing.
“It will affect our steel industry because it goes into steel production. And our European steel producers are also struggling to survive, so it will alter their business conditions,” Sigmund said in Jakarta. “That's why we are not happy with the decision.”
Indonesia has surprised investors and industry players with a series of flip flop decisions on the export ban, which was initially intended to take effect in 2022 but was pushed to 2020.
The government has defended the decision as part of a bigger push to develop downstream industries to support an ambitious program to develop a national electric vehicle industry and become one of the world’s largest producers of lithium-ion batteries for the automotive industry.
Leading a delegation for the first Indonesia-Germany Bilateral Maritime Forum on Monday and a bilateral steering committee meeting on Tuesday, Sigmund said the German steel industry was struggling with overcapacity resulting from falling market prices.
“The whole international landscape for steel production isn’t easy,” she said.
