Jakarta – The increase in mining licenses (IUP) in Indonesia occurred during the transition of government from centralization to decentralization or regional autonomy. With the implementation of regional autonomy, each region can regulate licensing in their respective regions.

Based on the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) report, the number of mining licenses as many as 750 in 2001 jumped to more than 10,000 licenses in 2010. Of the 10,000 licenses, 40% of them were coal licenses with 16.27 million hectares. Nevertheless, of the 10,000 licenses, about 35% are not Clean and Clear or bulging because the issuance is not according to regulations.

“Mining licenses boomed from 2001 to 2010 because the transition period to regional autonomy was not synchronized,” said PWYP researcher Rizky Ananda during a Public Discussion on Coal Governance Improvement in Indonesia at the Sari Pan Pacific Hotel, Central Jakarta, Thursday (8/6/2017).

The central government’s efforts to collect mining license data after the increase in licenses are adjusted to Law Number 4 of 2009, which has been carried out to classify the licenses into clean and clear (CnC) and non-clean and clear (non-CNC). However, this step did not go well due to rejection from several regions because it considered that the legal umbrella in determining CnC and non-CnC was unclear.

Rizky added that the forest area was also used for mining activities, with 102,000 hectares of Coal Contract of Work (PKP2B) coal concessions located in conservation forests. Meanwhile, those in protected forests reached 123.8 thousand hectares.

There are 194.8 thousand hectares in conservation forest areas and 519.8 thousand hectares in protected forest areas for mining license type concessions so that the coal license that is still in the protected forest area and conservation forest reach 940.4 thousand hectares or 15% of the total mining concession area.

“The distribution of coal concessions located in conservation and protected forest areas throughout Indonesia are mostly located in Papua, East Kalimantan, West Papua, and Aceh,” said Rizky.

From 2014 to April 2017, it was recorded that 776 mining licenses or 3.56 million hectares of coal mining were revoked or terminated by regional heads because they were entrusted with non-CnC status and were still in the exploration stage.

The remaining coal mining license until April 2017 reached 2,966, of which 52% or 1,561 mining licenses are known to have expired in December 2016. While the remaining 1,405 licenses SK permits are still active, but 217 permits are still non-CnC status.

With these findings, it is hoped that the problematic coal license will be controlled. Local governments need to act decisively to overcome this problem.

“The government must be firm and consistent in revoking or terminating both at the central and regional levels,” said Rizky.

Besides, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources’ need for data integration is critical to synchronize existing permits to supervise mining activities. Online state revenues also need to be developed, such as company databases, spatial data, production plan data, budgets, and export permits. So that they can supervise and improve tax compliance for mining business actors.