The control of coal production and exports is still considered as poor, reflected from the illegal exports that are still rampant, and estimated as the cause of state loss amounted to 20-30 trillion. Along with the issue of unreported export transactions, with also caused an estimated loss of 133 trillion rupiah. This was highlighted in the focus group discussion “The Monitoring of Coal Production and Export Still Weak” last (15/5).
Low control of production and exports incurred by local governments whose are not comply in submitting reports of production controls and coal trades of IUPs that are under the authority of local governments to the central government. Within this matter, Boni Arifianto, Head of Coal Marketing Supervision at the Directorate General of Mineral and Coal at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR) said that the MEMR has issued a warning letter to the local governments, but compliance is still tough to be improved due to the weak sanction of the regulation.
The function and independence of the witness surveyor in the control of coal exports also contribute an important role. Therefore, according to Krisandi Ardian, Directorate of Export of Industrial and Mining Products, Ministry of Trade, currently Ministry of Trade has assigned 9 surveyor companies that have met the requirements.
Krisandi Ardian added that coordination with Tekmira ESDM is currently arranged to established the SOP of surveillance performance surveyor. Also, the budget of the surveyors has been obligated to the company, in which raised a question to the independency of the surveyors. Therefore, it is recommended that the government shall budget the financing of surveyors from the customs of coal duty out.
Export data is still facing a problem of its validity. Edi Effendi Tedjakusuma, Head of EITI Secretariat, said that there is still a data distinction between coal exports in Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) with export data in UN Comtrade, with significant difference value. Responding to this, Sandi said that the Trade Ministry is reconciling BPS data with surveyor data. So far, BPS has obtained data from Export Declaration of Goods at Customs. According to him, there is an indication of wrong record, therefore, a system for surveyor data is currently being driven for the purpose of real-time publishing.
Dian Patria, Head of the Corruption Prevention Team of KPA SDK, said that facts in the field show that the implementation of the verification testing, however, is often disregarding the surveyors’ rules and guidelines. Based on the findings of witness survey’s selected sampling in 15 points, the number of scam surveyors, sampling with incompatible tools, surveyors that could not act independent, survey practices that did not match the survey policy, and the absence of a speed boat to conduct direct monitoring.
Inconsistent Coal Production Limit Policy
The government has set the policy of coal production in the 2015-2019 RPJMN by limiting the production of coal to 400 million tons in 2019. With no additional reserves, Indonesia is expected to be run out of coal reserve in 2087, with fix production 400 million ton (MEMR: 2018). In supervising coal production, Ministry of EMR has developed an online supervision for production and trade of coal but only applied to PKP2B or IUP that is authority of central government.
Unfortunately, the issuance of the Decree of the Minister of EMR 1395 K/30/MEM/2018 shows the inconsistency of government policy. This regulation provides a 10% incentive to increase coal production, if the company meets the 25% DMO trade quota with the provisions of the selling price that can be met. Kanti Researcher of Article 33 criticized the policy of incentive 10% which do not inline with the RPJMN 2015-2019 also RUEN which rules the production control. Responded to this, Boni Arifianto answered, the 10% incentive policy is also not necessarily done as it should refer to the agreed number of coal production in the feasibility study document.
Leonard Simanjuntak, Executive Director of Greenpeace, questioned the Government of Indonesia’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions as Indonesia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, by reducing its carbon emissions, 29% with business as usual and 41% with international aid. According to him, scenario which arranged by the MEMR has not yet accommodate the commitment of reduction of carbon emission. This is caused by the lack of coordination among related ministries.