Govt urged not to change regulations on mining

The Indonesian Mining Association (IMA) has urged the government not to change Regulation No.11/1967 on general mining, which covers work contract system and mining business licenses, satunet.dom reported on Thursday.

Paul Louis Coutrier, IMA's executive director, said on Thursday that abolishing the work contract system will discourage investors from entering Indonesia.

The new system to change it, Coutrier said, gives full authority to the central government to revoke the mining business licenses any time if it is considered to be deviating from existing policies in a certain period of time.

This full authority is considered to be no longer conducive for the investment climate in the mining sector, he said.

He reminded that under the work contract system all clear-cut agreements between the two sides for a certain period are already included. All the commitments and agreements are clearly mentioned in the work contracts and they constitute the main guide in their businesses, he said.

Coutrier said that the work contract system gives legal assurance to both sides and this is the positive point, which attracts investors to enter to Indonesia. But it all depends on the overnment whether to apply the new system, he said.

The most important thing is that Indonesia now needs new investments and all of them come from abroad. "To attract them, there should be legal certainty," he said, adding that one of the legal assurance has been clearly mentioned in the work contract system on Regulation No.11/1967. (*)