Under a rule introduced earlier this month, natural resource exporters must retain for three months in the domestic financial system 30% of their proceeds for every custom document for exports worth at least $250,000, starting from Aug. 1.
Coal miners' profit margins were already squeezed by plunging global prices and rising fuel costs, and the new rules would hinder their ability to pay contractors and vendors, Pandu Sjahrir, chairman of Indonesia Coal Miners Association, said in a statement. "We will prepare a banking regulation that allows a back-to-back loan where the proceeds that an exporter put into a bank can be used as a lending collateral," he said.
The government has already set a lower tax rate on the earnings that exporters receive in interest from their rupiah term deposits at local banks.