Government Formulates New Rules, Exporters Sell Coal Using HBA

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) is currently formulating regulations that require coal exporters to use the Reference Coal Price (HBA). Especially in the process of selling coal abroad.

The Director General of Minerals and Coal (Dirjen Minerba) of the Ministry of ESDM, Tri Winarno explained that this policy was implemented to maintain the price of coal from Indonesia to remain good in the global market.

"What is clear is that the HBA currently used uses real sales transaction data, well, there are some APBIs who want there to be further discussion regarding the HBA, but the point is that Indonesian coal prices should not be sold cheaply abroad. That's more or less," said Tri when met at the ESDM Ministry Building, Wednesday (5/2/2025).

Previously, the Minister of ESDM, Bahlil Lahadalia said that in the near future the government would issue regulations requiring exporters to use the HBA in the process of selling coal abroad. This policy will later be stated in the ESDM Ministerial Decree (Kepmen).

"I announce today that in the not too distant future, we will consider making a Ministerial Decree so that the HBA price is the one used for transactions in the global market," said Bahlil in the 2024 ESDM Sector Performance Achievement Press Conference, quoted Tuesday (4/2/2025).

He hopes that national coal exporters can follow the policy. He does not hesitate to recommend the revocation of export permits if there are coal companies that do not want to comply with the rules.

"If necessary, if they don't want to, then we don't need export permits. Something like that. So that the price of coal in other countries with our country is made cheaper by us. The price of our coal is determined by other countries," he said.

As is known, the price of coal in Indonesia has so far referred to several indexes, one of which is the Indonesia Coal Index (ICI). Bahlil noted that Indonesia itself exported 555 million tons of coal throughout 2024.

This number increases every year. Meanwhile, the total use of coal in the world is recorded at 8-8.5 billion tons. However, what is circulating in the global market only reaches 1.5 billion tons.