Export tax may hurt coal mining activities

The country's coal producers strongly protested the government's decision to impose five percent tax on their exports, saying that the export tax would not only result in the drop in their profit margin but also might discourage the flow of new investment in coal mining activities.

"We are afraid the export tax will discourage the influx of new investment in the coal mining sector. Besides, being strange because no countries in the world collect tax from coal exports , the government did not have any reasonable ground to impose the export tax," Jeffry Mulyono, the chairman of the association of coal miners (APBI), said.

Jeffry said that the decision to impose the export tax also reflected the government's inconsistency towards the improvement of the country's investment climate.

Director General of Geology and Mineral Resources at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Simon F. Sembiring, said that he was also involved in discussing the possibility of imposing the export tax with the Ministry of Finance.

"The finance minister went ahead with its plan to impose the export tax despite our objection," he said. Sembiring also feared that the export tax would discourage the inflow of new investment in coal mining activities. "If it occurs, then the government's program to promote the use of coal briquette will be affected," he added.

Meanwhile the chairman of the research department of the research and technology agency BPPT, Agus Rusyana, said that based on the agency's research, if properly used, the coal briquette as cooking fuel would be less polluted than kerosene.

He said that the agency's study indicated that the carbon monoxide produced by coal briquette is only about 106 part per million (ppm), much lower than between 250 and 300 ppm produced by kerosene stoves.(godang/dino)