Amendment To Mining Law: Resolution At Last?

The official text of the amendment to Indonesia's Mining Law (Law No. 4 of 2009) finally became available to the public last week as Law No. 3 of 2020. This amendment, spanning 93 pages, touched on a host of flashpoints in Indonesia's mining sectors – centralisation of authorities, conversion of COW (kontrak karya or contract of work) and CCOW (perjanjian karya pengusahaan pertambangan batu bara or coal contract of work) and IUP transfer – to name a few, by revising 83 articles, adding 52 new articles, and deleting 18 articles.

Some of the changes, like the prohibition to encumber mining license and commodities, are not entirely new and have been reflected previously in ministry regulation. As such, mining companies should be familiar with these. However, there are other notable changes in the amendment that will affect the way mining companies operate their business.