Government to stop temporarily issuing new mining licenses

The government is planning to temporarily stop issuing or extending mining licenses this year to allow it to settle growing conflicts between miners over overlapping mining areas in the country.

Coordinating Minister for the Economy Hatta Rajasa said in Jakarta on Monday that the moratorium on the issuance of new mining permits would be lifted only after the mine overlapping problems could be settled.

Based on ministry of energy and mineral resources data, of 8,000 mining permits have been issued around 6,000 mining permits have a land overlapping problem.

He said that during the moratorium period, the government would audit and verify those mining permits issued by provincial and regency governments to ensure that they would not overlap one another.

The minister acknowledged that the lack of control and coordination had led to the issuance of overlapping permits. He said that in many cases in provinces, a mining area was often awarded to more than one company.

Hatta said that the government would establish a special team under the coordination of the ministry of energy and mineral resources to carry out a verification work on the existing mining permits.

He said that the local administrations would not be allowed to issue new permits or extend the existing ones until all the verification works had been completed. (*)