JAKARTA, investor.id- PT Bukit Asam Tbk (PTBA) will spur coal exports until the end of this year to reduce the negative impact of the decline in the price of the black gold commodity on the global market. The member of the state-owned mining industry holding company MIND ID is eyeing the Asian market to increase the portion of its foreign sales this year.

"Sales this year are very challenging because coal prices are down. To compensate for that and maintain profits, we managed to increase the proportion of exports from 38% last year to 42% this year," said Bukit Asam (PTBA) Director of Finance and Risk Management Farida Thamrin in a Live Public Expose in Jakarta, Monday (27/11/2023).

Farid revealed, Bukit Asam's coal export destination countries are increasingly varied. "Currently, it is still dominated by India. But demand from other Asian countries has started to increase, including South Korea," he said. He added, several countries in Europe also began to be interested in buying coal from Bukit Asam. "Indeed, this year is different from 2021 and 2022, where in those two years there was extraordinary price development. This year coal prices have dropped by around 30%, but we remain optimistic because in the third and fourth quarters demand is still quite high. We see high demand in our buyer countries in Asia such as India and China," she said.

Farida emphasized, although coal prices fell by 30%, her party tried to make PTBA's revenue this year not to fall that deep. "Coal prices until the third quarter of 2023 are very challenging. In the third quarter of 2023 alone, the decline in coal prices reached 65% in Newcastle, with an average this year of 48%. We will keep the decline in sales from being too big," she said.

The company, said Farida, will try to increase coal production to 41 million tons by the end of this year, up from 37.1 million tons last year. Until the end of the third quarter of 2023, the company's coal production had reached 31.9 million tons, up 15% compared to the same period last year of 27.7 million tons.

Meanwhile, the company's coal sales were recorded at 11.2 million tons in January-September 2023, up 24% compared to the same period last year. With the realization of domestic market obligation (DMO) as much as 51%.

"PTBA continues to optimize the achievement of operational performance and make efficiency in all of the company's business processes, in line with the target until the end of 2023," Farida said.

Sources:investor.id-Nov 28,23