Indonesia keeps a formal list of critical minerals. It names 47 commodities, it was fixed by a ministerial decision signed on 14 September 2023, and it says nothing at all about how much of any of them the country actually mines. Read beside the production statistics, though, it becomes a useful document: of the 47 names on it, Indonesia is the world's largest miner of one, and the second-largest of two more.
That distance between the list and the output is the subject here. The instrument comes from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. The numbers come from the U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 and its Indonesia chapter of the Minerals Yearbook for 2023. Put together, they show a country concentrated in nickel, moving quickly in cobalt, modest in copper, and still exploring for rare earths — a distinction the list itself does not draw.
What the decision actually fixes
The instrument is Keputusan Menteri Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral Nomor 296.K/MB.01/MEM.B/2023, "Penetapan Jenis Komoditas yang Tergolong dalam Klasifikasi Mineral Kritis" — the designation of the commodity types falling within the classification of critical minerals. It was signed in Jakarta on 14 September 2023 by the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Arifin Tasrif, and the ministry's legal documentation service records it as a five-page document in the 2023 KESDM legal series.
The annex is a two-column table: the critical mineral on the left, the mined commodity it is derived from on the right. Aluminium comes from bauxite. Cobalt from cobalt. Nickel from nickel. Rare earths from rare earths. Silica from quartz sand, quartzite and quartz crystal. Mercury from cinnabar. Chromium from chromite. On the numbered list as the document reads, nickel is entry 28, rare earths 23, lithium 22, cobalt 20 and boron 7.
Diktum KEDUA defines the category, in Indonesian:
"Mineral Kritis ... merupakan mineral yang mempunyai kegunaan penting untuk perekonomian nasional dan pertahanan keamanan negara yang memiliki potensi gangguan pasokan dan tidak memiliki pengganti yang layak."
A mineral with important uses for the national economy and for national defence and security, carrying a potential disruption to supply, and without a suitable substitute. USGS's Indonesia chapter records the same test as four points: it is used in strategic industries; it is critical to the national economy, defence and security; it is prone to a high supply risk; and it has no suitable substitute. Diktum KETIGA sets those four out as the criteria for designation.
Diktum KEEMPAT is the operative part, and it is why the list carries commercial weight. The designation is to serve as a reference for ministries, agencies and provincial governments, within their authority, for eight purposes: regulating the governance of the mineral mining industry and its associated minerals, including processing and refining residues; regulating trade in that industry; setting fiscal policy in mineral and coal mining; setting the benchmark mineral price formula; policy on prioritising minerals for domestic needs; issuing business licences in mineral and coal mining; increasing investigation and research; and requiring follow-up exploration by business licence holders.
Two of those deserve a slow read from anyone planning a project. A listed commodity can be prioritised for domestic needs, and its processing chain is expressly brought within governance rules. Being on the list is not a statement that Indonesia holds the commodity. It is a statement that the state intends to manage it.
Diktum KELIMA gives the designation a three-year life, reviewable annually or at any time if necessary. Three years from 14 September 2023 falls in September 2026.
The production base underneath the list
| Critical mineral (list entry) | Indonesia 2024 | Indonesia 2025 est. | World 2025 est. | Indonesia share | Indonesia reserves |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nickel (no. 28) | 2,310,000 t | 2,600,000 t | 3,900,000 t | ~67% | 62,000,000 t of >140,000,000 t |
| Cobalt (no. 20) | 35,000 t | 44,000 t | 310,000 t | ~14% | 760,000 t of 12,000,000 t |
| Copper | 1,010,000 t | 710,000 t | 23,000,000 t | ~3% | 21,000,000 t of 980,000,000 t |
| Tin | 55,000 t | 61,000 t | 290,000 t | ~21% | 1,400,000 t of >6,000,000 t |
| Bauxite (source of aluminium, no. 1) | 9,900 thousand dry t | 10,000 thousand dry t | 440,000 thousand dry t | ~2% | 2,900,000 thousand dry t of 29,000,000 thousand dry t |
Mine production of contained metal unless stated, U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, February 2026. The world totals are the rounded figures USGS publishes; the percentages are our arithmetic across the two columns beside them.
Two things fall out of that table at once. Nickel in Indonesia is not really a critical-minerals story, it is the economy: the country produced roughly two-thirds of the world's mined nickel in 2025 on these figures, against 62 million tonnes of a world reserve base USGS puts above 140 million tonnes. And the reserve positions do not track the production positions. Indonesia holds about 44 percent of world nickel reserves but about two-thirds of mined nickel supply. In cobalt it holds roughly 6 percent of world reserves and produces 14 percent of supply.
Cobalt: the line that moved
Cobalt is the clearest illustration of how fast a position can shift.
USGS's Indonesia chapter for 2023 records the country as the second-ranked producer of mined cobalt in that year, at 8 percent of world production and 5 percent of world reserves, with output estimated to have doubled to 19,000 tonnes as high-pressure acid leaching plants ramped up. Those plants recover cobalt and nickel from limonite, a low-grade nickel ore, as mixed hydroxide precipitate.
Three editions later the share is different. The Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 puts Indonesian mined cobalt at 44,000 tonnes in 2025, up from 35,000 tonnes in 2024, and states that Congo (Kinshasa) was the world's leading source at an estimated 73 percent of the world total, "followed by Indonesia, which accounted for 14%". On those published numbers the Indonesian share roughly doubled in two years — 8 percent in 2023, about 12 percent in 2024, 14 percent in 2025.
The same edition records a significant revision to Indonesia's 2024 cobalt production and to its reserves, both made on company and government reports, which is a reminder that a single edition of the data is not a stable basis for a model.
Supply outside Indonesia moved too. In February 2025 Congo temporarily banned cobalt exports to address market oversupply and low prices. That October the temporary ban was replaced with export quotas: 18,125 tonnes of contained cobalt for the remainder of 2025, and up to 96,600 tonnes contained cobalt a year in 2026 and 2027, including 9,600 tonnes for national strategic reserves. The same edition estimates the average LME cash cobalt price at 15 dollars per pound in 2025 against 11.84 dollars in 2024, and United States net import reliance for cobalt at an estimated 79 percent of apparent consumption, up from 74 percent.
An Indonesian cobalt producer is therefore exposed to a policy decision taken in Kinshasa. That is the practical meaning of a 14 percent share.
Nickel: production up, price down
The nickel picture is the mirror image. Global mine production rose an estimated 5 percent to 3.9 million tonnes in 2025, and Indonesian output rose an estimated 13 percent as new operations continued to ramp up. Over the same year the average LME cash nickel price fell an estimated 11 percent, to 15,000 dollars per tonne from 16,812 dollars in 2024. According to the International Nickel Study Group, cited in the same document, the global primary nickel market balance has been in surplus since 2022 — 98,500 tonnes that year, 170,000 tonnes in 2023, 182,000 tonnes in 2024, and an estimated 189,000 tonnes in the first nine months of 2025 against 107,000 tonnes a year earlier.
Volume and value are moving in opposite directions. For anyone underwriting nickel in Indonesia, the question the data raises is not whether the ore is there — on these figures it plainly is — but how much more supply the market will absorb before the price recovers. We set out the investment side of that in [Indonesian nickel mining investment](/en/news/indonesia-nickel-mining-investment-2026).
Three names on the list that are not in the producer tables
Rare earths, lithium and boron all appear on Indonesia's critical minerals list. None of them appears in the corresponding USGS mine production table.
The Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 rare-earths edition lists the producing countries — the United States, Australia, Brazil, Burma, China, Greenland, India, Madagascar, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand and Vietnam — against a rounded world total of 390,000 tonnes. Indonesia is not among them, and the edition's own note on revisions names Australia, Brazil, Burma, Madagascar, Nigeria and Vietnam, not Indonesia.
The ministry has said plainly that this is exploration-stage work. In a press release dated 19 January 2024, the acting head of the Geological Agency, Muhammad Wafid, described mapping the distribution of 47 critical and strategic commodities and named the two under investigation:
"Di antara mineral kritis dan strategis yang dilakukan penyelidikannya oleh Badan Geologi adalah lithium dan boron." — Among the critical and strategic minerals that the Geological Agency has been investigating are lithium and boron.
The same release names the areas where lithium and boron findings looked promising — Bledug Kuwu, Bledug Cangkring, Jono, Crewek, Kasonga and Mamuju — records a recommendation for Indonesia's first rare-earth mining business permit area (WIUP for LTJ/REE), at Mamuju, and notes boron demand rising 30 percent in 2022 as a component of hydrogen fuel cells and a raw material for neodymium-iron-boron magnets and for Pyrex.
The honest reading is that these are prospects, not supply. A list entry for rare earths in Indonesia describes a policy intention and a geological programme, not tonnage.
What it means for an investor
- The list is an instrument, not an inventory. It tells you what the state intends to manage, not what the ground holds. Every commodity claim still needs its own USGS or company document behind it.
- Classification points towards domestic processing. Trade rules, the benchmark price formula and priority for domestic needs are three of the eight declared uses. A critical-mineral listing is more likely to add downstream obligations than to relax them.
- There is a three-year clock on it. The designation was set for three years from 14 September 2023 and is reviewable at any time. A list that can be revised annually is a policy variable, not a fixed framework.
- Nickel's position is a production fact more than a geological one. Two-thirds of mined supply against 44 percent of reserves means the advantage sits in processing capacity and pace of development — and both are policy-dependent.
- Cobalt's Indonesian share depends on Congo. A 14 percent share is a real position and a small one against a supplier holding 73 percent that has already shown it will manage the market through quotas.
- Watch the edition, not the year. USGS revised Indonesian 2024 cobalt production and reserves between editions, and revised Indonesian nickel reserves as well. Model from the newest edition and expect further revisions.
Catatan Teramine
The section above is Teramine's editorial assessment, not a statement of fact from the ministry, from USGS or from any government body.
Indonesia's critical minerals list is better read as a permissions document than as a resource document. Its eight stated uses run from fiscal policy to licensing to domestic-need priority, and every one of them concerns how the state will treat a commodity, not how much of it exists. That reading explains a puzzle foreign buyers run into regularly: why a commodity can be "critical" in Jakarta while producing nothing at all.
Our own view is that the interesting part of the 2026 data is not the nickel headline — a two-thirds share was already known — but the asymmetry sitting under it. Nickel: two-thirds of supply, under half of reserves. Cobalt: a 14 percent supply share built on roughly 6 percent of reserves, and a by-product of nickel processing rather than a standalone business. Tin: about a fifth of supply on about a quarter of reserves. Ratios like those say that Indonesia's position rests on processing capacity and on the pace at which projects are built, and processing capacity is an asset that regulation can reshape. A buyer should price the permit and the smelter, not the ranking.
What we could not source, and therefore did not state
- Entries 40 to 47 of the annex. The official five-page PDF of the decision carries no text layer on its final page, so the last entries could not be read off the document. Copper and tin, which appear on the list, are attributed here to CNBC Indonesia's report of the decision (18 October 2023) rather than to the Kepmen text itself.
- Whether the designation has been renewed or replaced. The decision gave it a three-year term from September 2023. No successor decision or renewal announcement was found on the ministry's legal documentation service in this run, and no claim is made either way.
- Royalty rates, non-tax state revenue or fiscal treatment specific to listed critical minerals. None was read, so none is stated.
- An Indonesian reserve estimate from the ministry itself. All reserve figures here are USGS's.
- Unit costs, capital costs or financing terms for any Indonesian processing project.
- Indonesian production figures for any listed commodity on which USGS publishes no country table.
Sources
Every figure, date and quotation above comes from the documents and pages listed below, each of which was opened and read for this article.
