Luhut Opens His Voice About Nickel Price Drops Due To Reckless Downstream

Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Menko Marves) Luhut Binsar Panjaitan. (Photo: Doc. ANTARA)

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut B Pandjaitan gave an answer to the statement of the Anis-Muhaimin National Team's Co-Captain, Thomas Lembong, who accused the decline in nickel prices due to'reckless' downstreaming.

Through his post on his Instagram page, Luhut asked Tom Lembong to look at the price data for nickel commodities in general for the past 10 years.

"He (Tom Lembong) is also a businessman, right, the commodity cycle is up and down, whether it's coal, nickel, tin, gold. Anything," he said, quoted Wednesday, January 24.

When viewed over the past 10 years, said Luhut, since 2014, the world's average nickel price is 15 thousand US dollars, still lower than the current price.

Even in the 2014-2019 period, he said, when the initial downstream period began, the average world nickel price was only 12 thousand US dollars.

"I don't understand how Tom Lembong provides a statement like this, how do you give the advocate a lie to the candidate for leader you support? I'm sad to see you. This means that I doubt you intellectually," said Luhut.

The Impact Of Nickel Prices On The Economy

Luhut said Tom Lembong, who is also the former Head of the Capital Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) and the Minister of Investment, must understand that the price of nickel is too high will endanger the economy.

"We learned from the Cobalt case 3 years ago, the price was high, finally people were looking for other forms of battery. That was one of the births of Lithium Ferrp Phosphate (LFP)," Luhut continued.

Luhut explained, if nickel prices are too high, people tend to look for other technologies to replace nickel as the basic material for electric vehicle batteries. For this reason, Indonesia needs to find a balance between supply and nickel prices so that prices are maintained.

"But remember that lithium batteries can be recycled while LFP cannot until today. We are grateful that we also developed LFP with China and lithium with China and others," explained Luhut.

Thanks to the downstreaming carried out, Luhut said that he had brought Indonesia to score an inflation rate of less than 3 percent.

Luhut said, Indonesia has also had an export surplus for 44 consecutive months.

With downstreaming, Luhut claims Indonesia can maintain economic growth above 5 percent when other countries are mired in the midst of world economic challenges.

"Maybe until 2030 we hope that our trajectory can get our income per capita at 10,000 US dollars and we hope to believe our GDP is 3 trillion US dollars or more. So downstreaming will make Indonesia much better," concluded Luhut.