JAKARTA- Indonesia plans to double its palm oil replanting subsidy to 60 million rupiah ($3,833.87) per hectare, its chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto said in a statement on Tuesday, in efforts to accelerate the program.
Indonesia in 2016 launched a subsidized replanting program for palm oil, one of its top commodity exports, to boost yields from smallholders without clearing more land.
However, the take-up has been slow due to administrative hurdles and farmers’ concerns over loss of income while they wait for the trees to mature, among others.
Airlangga said the government will also review the requirements to join the program.
The smallholders palm oil replanting scheme initially targeted replacing around 2.5 million hectares of old trees by 2025.
Yet only 326,308 hectares had been approved by the end of 2023, and only 205,524 hectares have actually been planted.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s exports of refined tin all but evaporated in January with just 400 metric tons shipped abroad by the world’s largest exporter, all in the form of solder.
That represented the lowest monthly volume since August 2015, when Indonesia imposed an export regime to exclude illegally mined metal. This time too, the drop is down to a change in permitting.
Tin exports will resume, but the uncertainty has unsettled both paper and physical markets.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month tin price , currently trading at around $26,500 per ton, is up by 5.3 percent on the start of the year.
Tin is the only base metal showing any year-to-date gains. The rest of the LME pack are struggling in the face of weak demand and reduced manufacturing activity.
But tin supply is highly concentrated and the sudden drop in Indonesian refined metal shipments coincides with the ongoing suspension of operations at the world’s biggest mine in Myanmar.
Indonesian exports fell by 12 percent to 75,000 tons last year, but that was still equivalent to around a fifth of global demand.
Ironically, the change in mine permitting process from annual to every three years is meant to cut red tape and smooth the flow of exports over the start of every year.
But there are now a lot of miners in Indonesia thanks to the country’s nickel boom and the country’s mining ministry is still processing hundreds, opens new tab of mine approval requests. Without an approved mining plan, operators cannot export.
Indonesian exports fell by 12 percent to 75,000 tons last year, but that was still equivalent to around a fifth of global demand.
Ironically, the change in mine permitting process from annual to every three years is meant to cut red tape and smooth the flow of exports over the start of every year.
But there are now a lot of miners in Indonesia thanks to the country’s nickel boom and the country’s mining ministry is still processing hundreds, opens new tab of mine approval requests. Without an approved mining plan, operators cannot export. -Reuters
