Government to push coal demand from manufacturing industries
Tuesday, November 22 2016 - 03:54 AM WIB
This was said by Spokesman of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Sujatmiko as reported by Bisnis Indonesia on Tuesday.
As such, Sujatmiko said that the government for now has no plan to revise the so-called domestic market obligation (DMO) projection set under 2015-2019 the National Medium Term Development Plan (RPJM) of the coal sector.
The DMO refers to the obligation of coal miners to set aside certain volume of coal production to meet domestic demand, of which 80 percent comes from the power plant sector.
The Indonesia Coal Mining Association (ICMA) has earlier called on the government to revise the annual DMO projection in the 2015-2019 RPJM as the annual target has never been met in addition to the fact that government?s program to develop a combined 35,000 MW of power plants, much of which coal-fueled, would not be completed by the 2019 target.
Executive Director of ICMA, Hendra Sinadia said that the 2015-2019 RPJM, which envisages growing domestic coal demand and declining export, projects domestic market obligation (DMO) of coal to more than double to 240 million tons by 2019 from 102 million tons in 2015.
He said that the jump in the DMO volume (coal production allocated for domestic market) is based on the assumption that the government?s program to develop a combined 35,000 MW power plants can been completed in 2019. He said that the largest domestic market for coal is the power plant sector.
But Sujatmiko said that to help compensate the lower demand of coal from the power plant sector, the government would push for increasing coal demand from manufacturing industries such as textile, cement, and steel. He did not provide further details.
?Coal demand does not only come from the electricity sector. We?ll try to push (for higher demand) from industries such as cement, textile, steel, and others,? he said, but did not elaborate. (*)