From the forest, now the Morowali industrial area is jammed in the morning

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The boss of the nickel smelter industrial area in Morowali, Central Sulawesi said that the construction of this nickel smelter has had a positive impact on the surrounding community, such as increasing the economic activity of local residents.

CEO of PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) Alexander Barus said that the existence of a smelter made people change their profession to become traders and create a boarding house or residential business. In fact, he continued, now the Morowali industrial area is causing congestion in the morning and afternoon in the surrounding area.

“Morowali is now jammed in the morning and afternoon. Its residents have changed their professions to become traders and built a boarding house business,” he said in a webinar, Tuesday (13/10/2020).

Flashback to the initial process of building the smelter, he said that his party encountered many obstacles, ranging from the difficulty of access to the location, the difficulty of electricity supply, and even no telecommunication signal.

“Morowali is a world unknown to people. There is no signal, use a satellite cellphone, the road to it is 12-13 hours by land,” he said.

In order to attract investors, the government has also given incentives in the form of tax holidays, so that investors from China are attracted to come. After that, the smelter construction process began.

“Morowali is still a forest, electricity still uses generators, we are assigned to manage this industrial area,” he explained.

The first thing he did was send people to China to learn how to process and operate a nickel smelter. At that time 80 people were sent for training in China. Initial construction was carried out in 2014 with an initial capacity of 300 thousand Nickel Pig Iron (NPI)

“We were also looking for a source of electricity supply, we came to Poso 3, but it turned out to be for Antam, so we had to get up power plant itself to supply electricity to the first smelter, “he explained.

[Gambas:Video CNBC]

(wia)

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