The Indonesian government is understood to have signed off on export licences for 1.4mn t of urea for this year, which will be dispersed among state-owned Pupuk subsidiaries.
Pupuk's subsidiaries are now able to float urea sales tenders, with granular urea supplier Kaltim expected to come to the market first. But there was no comment from Pupuk or the parties involved.
The last Indonesian sales tender probably took place on 6 November, when Pusri closed an enquiry for 5,000t each of standard and low biuret prilled urea.
The lack of export licence issuance had limited availability in southeast Asia, with Malaysia's Petronas largely tied up with offtake agreements, leaving spot granular urea availability in January-February to Brunei's BFI. Granular urea prices have firmed to $410-425/t fob southeast Asia this week, up from $396-415/t fob last week, as international prices jumped in the wake of an Indian tender and firmer levels in the US.
Indonesia exported 1.52mn t of urea in January-November last year, and just under 1.5mn t of urea in all of 2024, latest trade data show.
