Deputy for Strategic Downstreaming at the Ministry of Investment/BKPM Heldy Satrya Putera revealed that Indonesia is aiming to be named as the world's top two stainless steel producing countries and the world's top five EV (electric vehicle) battery producing countries through nickel downstreaming. In the webinar "Strategy for Reaching the 2023 Investment Target by Encouraging Downstream Production" which was monitored online in Jakarta, Wednesday, Heldy said nickel downstream was prioritized for two industries, namely stainless steel and the electric vehicle battery raw material industry.
"The priority for nickel is how to make stainless steel and batteries (EV). We have calculated how much added value is generated, how much global demand there is, investment needs, impact on GDP, employment and exports that can be increased," he said. In the presentation material he presented, it was noted that for the stainless steel industry, the government is aiming for added value of up to 9.5 times with global demand in 2045 reaching up to 365 billion US dollars. Meanwhile for the EV battery industry, the added value is estimated to reach 67 times with a potential global demand of US$5.91 trillion.
On the other hand, nickel downstream for the two sectors until 20240 has a potential investment value of up to US$127.9 billion, contributes to US$43.2 billion to GDP, absorbs 357 thousand workers, and exports potential of up to US$81 billion. Heldy explained that high added value from downstream was one of the main considerations for the government to encourage nickel downstreaming. Another consideration is that nickel commodity itself is one of Indonesia's main leading commodities. In fact, as many have mentioned, Indonesia has the largest nickel reserves in the world which can actually be utilized domestically.
Apart from that, very promising demand in the future is considered to be another consideration to continue to support the downstream mineral commodity. Heldy explained that the nickel downstream that had been carried out had had a significant impact on the achievement of investment realization in recent years. He explained that investment realization in the base metal and metal goods industry has continued to increase after the ban on exports and downstream nickel was implemented. On the export side, downstream nickel has succeeded in boosting national export performance from only US$3 billion in 2017 to US$29 billion in 2022 for exports of nickel downstream products. "Now it is over US$30 billion, meaning that our exports have increased more than 10 times from downstream business results," he said.
