Indonesian State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir spoke about optimizing nickel potential in Indonesia. According to him, Indonesia needs to form an organization such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC, which is specifically for nickel commodities.
Because, he continued, nickel production in Indonesia is above 50 percent of world production.
According to Erick Thohir, the formation of the nickel version of OPEC can be done by inviting the Philippines. Because the Philippines is the second largest nickel producer after Indonesia.
Erick Thohir said that the abundance of nickel in Indonesia is a potential that must be utilized properly.
Because nickel, he continued, has a series of derivative products that are needed by the market today, one of which is for the production of batteries.
Indonesia itself is the country with the first order for world nickel production. Indonesia’s nickel production in 2017 was 345,000 metric tons (MT), then jumped to 1 million MT in 2021, the country also has reserves of 21 million MT.
While the Philippines has been one of the largest nickel-producing countries and exporters of nickel ore for some time.
After suffering a slight hit between 2017 and 2018, when nickel production fell from 366,000 MT to 340,000 MT, nickel mining in the Philippines increased production to 420,000 MT in 2019.
