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Jakarta’s new mining and oil regulations are really about rent-seeking and corruption.
Mr. Kurtz is head of Asia-Pacific for A.T. Kearney, where Mr. Van Zorge is a senior fellow.
Jakarta – Lately, the Indonesian government has unleashed an array of policies that are keeping mining and oil executives awake at night across this vast and geologically rich archipelago. The unpopular new regulations, aimed at reforming the mining and oil industries, are promoted in the name of “national interest.” Yet left uncorrected, they will inevitably lead to a dramatic decline of output in Indonesia’s extractive industries, damaging foreign investment and economic growth.
Particularly hard-hit will be some of Indonesia’s less-developed regions such as Kalimantan and Papua, where oil and mining play major economic roles. “Equating the government to the Emperor Nero and the local mining industry to ancient Rome,” said Bill Sullivan, leading legal consultant for the mining industry in Indonesia, “It is as if Nero is choosing to complacently fiddle while Rome burns.”
Why exactly this fiddling persists—especially since large investors have already cut back from planned capital outlays—is open to debate.