REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Some entrepreneurs urge government to build smelter for mining industry. According to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin), the building meets the implementation of Ministerial Regulation of Energy and Mineral Resources Number 7/2012.

The Kadin’s Chairman for Trade, Distribution, and Logistics, Natsir Mansyur, said government should consider the building of smelter. “we need big investment for that project,” he said on Monday.

He added, the specification of smelter result should be conducted gradually started from 40 to 60 percent. It will reach 99 percent on the fifth year.

Despite its seriousness on the downstream of mining products, government neglects the building of infrastructures, such as road, bridge, and building. “Government should provide infrastructure to build the smelter, especially electricity,” the Kadin Vice Chairman for Industry, Research, and Technology, Bambang Sujagad, said.

He assessed that the building of the smelter would use 80 percent total cost on electricity. Government will decrease the subsidy on electricity from oil and alter it with other resources such as geothermal.

“With smelter, electricity should be increased. On the other hand, the electricity in Java region is overload,” Sujagad said.

The building of a smelter needs 1,250 megawatt of electricity. It was impossible given that the capacity of Indonesian electricity was not good, he said.

The building of smelter for mining needed at least five years, he added. “It is not enough if it is limited until 2014,” he said. Once Indonesia build the smelter, the country would be the biggest supplier of manufacture products in the world.

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