Coal should be considered as strategic commodity: IMA

The Association of the Indonesian Mining Producers (AMI) has called on the House of Representatives (DPR) to declare coal as a strategic commodity in the proposed Mining, Mineral and Coal law currently being debated at the House, Investor Daily reported on Tuesday.

"If coal is considered as a strategic commodity and should be mostly used as an important alternative energy to lessen our dependence in oil in the future," the association's chairman Jeffery Mulyono said in his address during a scientific week held by the Association of Mining Students in Bandung Monday.

He said that the existing mining law had clearly stipulated that the main purpose of the development of the mining sector was to support the country's economic development. "It is contrary with the new law which is now being debated in the house. The proposed law only accommodates the autonomy law and the forestry law which have been enacted along before," he said.

According to him, the proposed law has yet to state that the mining sector as one of the country's economic sector that should be promoted in order to support the country's economy.

The House is currently debating the draft of the new mining law to replace the current law which is no longer able accommodate the change in the mining licensing procedures as the result of the regional autonomy, and the new forestry law which bans the open-pit mining development in protected forests. (*)