Provincial government to takeover mining permit starting October

The South Kalimantan provincial administration has started taking over mining permit authority in the province one month earlier than the October schedule, Kontan reported.

All regency administrations in the country will have to transfer mining permit authority to provincial administrations starting next month as part of the central government?s efforts to revamp and clean up the messy mining licensing process in the regency level.

The paper quoted Kustono Widodo, Head of the South Kalimantan Provincial Administration?s Mining Office as saying that the local provincial government has started to assume the authority over so-called IUP mining business permit in the province after the Kota Baru regency administration transferred the licensing authority. Other regencies are in the process of completing the transfer.

Kustono said that there over 800 IUPs in the province, in addition to 19 PKP2B coal mining contracts of work. Of the more than 800 IUPs, 75 have been declared to already hold the status of clear and clean (C&C), while 341 have applied for the C&C status.

He said that the non-C&C mining permits are mainly caused by the miners? failure in fulfilling financial obligations to the state, or their mining concessions are overlapping with other miners or state forest. He said that while the regency administrations have been generally loose with regards to the C&C requirements, the provincial government will be tougher in requiring mining firms to meet the requirements.

Hendra Sinadia, Executive Director of the Indonesia Coal Mining Association said that miners generally welcome the government?s move to transfer the permitting authority to the provincial administration in a bid to clean up the messy permitting process. (*)