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Indonesian mining investments to reach five-year high in 2020
PT Freeport Indonesia and PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara are slated to invest $2.3 billion and $1.59 billion respectively this year.
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Nickel ore is processed at a factory owned by PT Vale Indonesia. (JP/Ruslan Sangadji)
T
he government is expecting mining investments to reach US$7.75 billion this year, the highest projected amount between 2015 and 2024, fueled by a tidal wave of smelter development projects.
The largest chunks of investment this year are slated to come from mining heavyweights PT Freeport Indonesia and PT Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara.
According to Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry data released Tuesday, the two mining giants would invest $2.3 billion and $1.59 billion respectively.
“Investments will decline from 2021 to 2024 because smelter development and investment will decline during that period,” the ministry’s coal and minerals director general, Bambang Gatot Ariyono, said at a House of Representative hearing in Jakarta.
A wave of smelter construction began a few years ago in anticipation of the government’s ban on mineral ore exports. The world’s leading nickel producer set a ban on exports of nickel ore starting 2020 and will do so for all other mineral ores starting 2022. The ban enforces the government’s aim of extracting more bang for its buck from the country’s mineral wealth.
Four smelters are expected to become operational this year alone, ministry data shows. Two of them are nickel smelters, one is for manganese and one is for lead.
