Indonesia's energy ministry (ESDM) has launched an E-RKAB work plan system to simplify its standard operating procedures and business processes in licensing and supervision of the mineral and coal mining sectors.
The ESDM started its evaluation in August on the streamlining of business processes, aiming to address delays in the processing of requests from mining companies, a request that industry participants have repeatedly asked for.
The E-RKAB is an expansion of the ESDM's digitalisation and integration of several oversight and monitoring programmes such as the E-PNBP, Mineral One Monitoring System and the Marketing Verification Module.
Recent extended delays in approvals to revised RKAB output plans, which had taken some producers out of the market, were related to the digitalisation efforts of the ESDM, market participants said. Some producers last week informed customers of their inability to perform previously agreed sales, forcing some buyers to find replacement cargoes in an already tightly supplied market.
Producers have now requested to revise their output plans through the E-RKAB system, participants said. Each firm should submit necessary supporting documents for the revisions, while considering the remaining duration of the calendar year.
Speedy approvals are anticipated in the coming weeks as some revised RKABs had been approved manually and entries on the E-RKAB system are only as a formality, a participant familiar with the matter told Argus.
But some participants said that potential technical issues could cause delays to approvals, as technical issues with the newly integrated monitoring systems disrupted barging and vessel loading operations since the second half of September.
The approvals of revised RKAB work plans could lift remaining quotas held by some producers and release fresh spot cargoes in November, participants said, potentially weighing on the upwards momentum in seaborne coal prices. But some are optimistic of Chinese demand increasing as its economic activity expands.
Chinese economic activity edged higher with the country's official manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) rising to 50.2pc in September from 49.7pc in August, logging a fourth consecutive month-on-month gain, National Bureau of Statistics data show. A PMI below the threshold of 50 signals an economic contraction.
China is the largest importer of Indonesian GAR 4,200 kcal/kg coal, which was assessed by Argus at a three-month high of $55.53/t fob Kalimantan on 29 September, up by $1.66/t from the previous week, with the increase supported partly by tighter supplies.
