Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) during his visit to the United States (US) also met with Freeport McMoran CEO Ricard Adkerson. During the meeting, discussions were discussed regarding increasing freeport shares in Indonesia, as well as extending mining permits.
“I am happy to hear the discussion about adding 10% of Freeport’s shares in Indonesia and The extension of the mining permit for 20 years has reached the final stage,” said Jokowi to Ricard Adkerson, in a statement, Tuesday (14/11/2023).
President Jokowi also hopes that this can be resolved by the end of November this year. “Completed at the end of this month,” he concluded.
In a separate statement after the meeting, Ad Interim Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Erick Thohir assessed that currently relations between Indonesia and the United States continue to improve, especially in the field of trade.
“If we look more closely, our trade surplus with America has reached almost US$ 16 billion, and the growth in the last few years has been fast. American investment in Indonesia is now number four, which has never happened before,” said Erick.
Therefore, Erick said that this was the basis for President Jokowi to continue to encourage United States investment in Indonesia, one of which was from Freeport McMoRan. “What happens is that our BUMN already controls 51 percent,” he continued.
Erick further revealed that in the meeting between President Jokowi and the CEO of Freeport McMoRan, the downstreaming carried out by Freeport was also discussed. Erick said that currently Freeport is not only carrying out gold and copper mining activities, but has built a smelter to process it.
“This is an investment that we are downstreaming, which previously was purely gold mining and cooperage, but now it has started to be reduced to industrialization by opening a smelter in Surabaya,” he added.
Erick also revealed that during the meeting Freeport appeared to show its commitment to building other smelters in other locations in Indonesia, including in Fakfak Regency, West Papua Province.
“Not only in Surabaya, Freeport is committed to building a smelter in Fakfak in Papua,” said Erick.
Erick also assessed that a number of things presented and discussed at the meeting were very good for increasing investment which would have an impact on improving the welfare of the Indonesian people.
“These things that were conveyed earlier are very positive for us to continue to increase investment from abroad to open up job opportunities in Indonesia itself as the President dreams of,” he said.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
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(pgr/pgr)