Jakarta (VNA) – Indonesian President Joko Widodohas ordered his cabinet ministers to set a target of reducing exports ofunprocessed coal and accelerate plans to develop derivative industries forprocessing the fuel in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

Indonesia, the world’s biggest thermal coal exporter, shouldquickly develop a local industry to upgrade, liquefy and gasify its coal, thepresident said, urging ministers to determine the volume of output that couldbe used for such processing.

The Indonesian government aims to partially replace importsof liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) used by Indonesians as fuel with dimethylether (DME) made from coal.

Widodo also asked the cabinet ministers to come up with aroadmap for coal optimisation to boost the development of the domestic coalsector using environmentally-friendly technologies.

Indonesia has been seeking to squeeze more value out of itsrich mineral resources ranging from copper to nickel by processing rawmaterials at home.

State-controlled coal miner PT Bukit Asam is currentlybuilding a coal gasification plant which is due to produce 1.4 million tonnesof DME per year from 2025.

Indonesia produced 610 million tonnes of coal last year andhas targeted 550 million tonnes in 2020. Most of Indonesia’s coal is exported,with the rest mainly used in power generation.

Indonesia’s coal output reached 370 million tonnes in thefirst eight months of this year, or 67.3 percent of the yearly plan, accordingto the General Department of Minerals and Coal under the Indonesian Ministry ofEnergy and Mineral Resources./.