Govt to impose tight supervision on coal export

Government will soon tender an independent consultant tasked with supervising coal export activities starting from upstream to shipment in a bid to avert the export of illegal coal that has affected the state revenue.

Head of sub-directorate production and operation supervision division of the directorate general of mineral, coal and geothermal development at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Bambang Hartoyo said in West Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara Tuesday that it is necessary for the government to start imposing a tight supervision on upstream to downstream coal production activities to optimize the state income.

The reason is, according to Bambang, there have been two versions regarding the record on national coal production, the government and another party, which each has different figures.

"In our 2006 record, the national coal production is around 168 million tons, while, according to another party, it reaches 180 million tons. Why is it different? This requires supervision," Bambang said.

According to Bambang, the coal production supervision is government's initial move to supervise mineral production activities and in the coming years, tight control will also be imposed on production activities of other kinds of mineral.

Meanwhile, state coal miner PT Tambang Batubara Bukit Asam's (PTBA) director for production Milawarma and PT Berau Coal's president director Bob Kamandanu hailed the government's plan to appoint an independent team to supervise coal production activities in the country.

They said that as a form of corporate accountability as the companies are subject to audit, they provide report on the outputs on a regular basis -monthly, every three months and annually. (*)