Jakarta. The government on Monday said that the recent export ban on unprocessed bauxite ores did not come out of the blue, adding that the miners already had enough time to prepare and work on their smelters.

Indonesia in 2020 issued a policy on raw mineral export ban. However, the ban only came into effect three years after its issuance. The government urged companies to use this given time to pick up the pace on their smelters. Companies who are halfway through the smelter construction as of January can continue exporting their metal ores even after the deadline of June 10, 2023.

Bauxite —of which Indonesia is quite abundant— is subject to this export ban. Indonesia plans to build 12 bauxite smelters, four of which are already operating. Eight others are still a work in progress, but a verification team discovered that seven of those smelters were still “just open fields”. 

“We have given them three years. … The eight smelters that were supposedly in progress claimed that they had already reached between 33 and around 60 percent completion. But our team found out that seven of them were still ‘open fields’,” Irwandy Arif, a special staff at the Mineral Resources Ministry, told a virtual conference on Monday.

“They probably measure the progress from how much they have spent [on the smelter]. But we have to see the [project] in a comprehensive manner, not just the costs,” Irwandy said.

Irwandy attributed the sluggish smelter construction to funding. He also suspected that some companies might prefer to focus on exporting before the ban entered into force rather than constructing the smelters.

According to the 2023 US Geological Survey, Indonesia’s bauxite reserves stand at 1 billion dry metric tons, with production totaling 21 million dry metric tons in 2022. Indonesia produced 1.1 million tons of alumina last year. 

Five companies can still export raw minerals until May 2024 as their smelters are at least halfway done. Media reports revealed that copper miners Freeport Indonesia and Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara got the extension. Sebuku Iron Lateritic Ores (iron), Kapuas Prima Coal (lead), and Kobar Lamandau Mineral (zinc) are also on the list.